Botmake.io

Botmake.io provides a range of tools to assist you in the creation of an engaging chatbot.

Random Answers

When a chatbot does not know an answer, it will provide what’s known as a random answer based on a list that is totally at the discretion of you – the creator. Random answers can be crafted and manipulated to make your chatbot’s responses seem a lot more organic via the use of the Flows feature.

The teaching system is straight-forward. As you and other users interact with your bot, it will accumulate a list of unanswered queries, to which you can provide single or multiple answers. Multiple answers are great for giving your bot some autonomy and is a fundamental step in simulating the “free will” of your bot.

For instance, if you are wanting to teach your bot how to response to ‘How are you?’, instead of just ‘Good’, you could include a range of answers of varying intensity and mood. This can be organized and thought of in scales:

Guest Question: How are you?

Politeness Scale:
Good. -> Good, thanks. -> Good, thank you.

Wellness Scale:
Not good. -> I’m alright. -> I’m good. -> I’m excellent.

NOTE: When teaching your bot to respond to basic pleasantries like ‘Hi’ or ‘How are you?’ – keep in mind that different users will speak to your bot, and each user may possess a unique set of colloquialisms based on their demographic. For instance, one user might write “how r u” or “how are ya?” instead of “How are you?” Over time, with the help of the Copy Answers feature, you can help your bot learn to recognize as many variations as it receives.

Text Responses

Creators can also choose from text responses, image responses, GIF responses and button responses. Text responses are self-explanatory, whereas image responses can be uploaded directly from the creator’s computer. GIFS, unfortunately, are [at present] limited to GIPHY posts, and by design of the site’s GIF engine, the creator cannot freely choose a GIF based on their search term. They can however, “search” their term multiple times until the engine produces a GIF they are happy with. Buttons are a particularly useful feature, especially for bots that are created for commercial and professional services.

At present, users are allowed to create up to five buttons per individual answer, which are linked to whatever exact text query they match. For example, if a button says “FREE CONTENT” and a user clicks it, the bot will respond as though the user has manually entered the phrase free content.

URLs

You can also utilize special text functions. For instance, you can include URLs in your bot’s response text. The formatting for embedding URLs is as follows:

[URL=link]TEXT[/URL]

NOTE: Formatting URLs requires the https:// or http:// prefix to function properly, i.e. https://www.google.com.

Guest Names

Bots can also, within reason, identify the names of other users. Keep in mind, users who speak to your bot must be registered on the site in order for your bot to use their name. The formatting for guest name integration is: {{guest_name}}

So for instance, if you wish to create a greeting in which your bot acknowledges the name of the user, you can add answers like ‘Hello, {{guest_name}}!’

Other Tools

You will also find a few other available options, including ‘View Conversation’, ‘Delete’, ‘Mark As Bad Word’ and ‘Remove From Suggestions’. ‘View Conversation’ is great for tracking down the context of a particular guest query, and can assist with designing conversation flows that pertain to a specific topic. ‘Mark As Bad Word’ and ‘Remove From Suggestions‘ are highly underrated features that can both be reverse-engineered to change the functionality of your bot. You don’t have to reserve ‘Mark As Bad Word’ for profanities; you can use it as a general ward against any topic your bot is incapable of discussing. ‘Remove From Suggestions’ is great for private users who need to keep certain queries out of their bot’s Auto-Complete list, provided they have the Auto-Complete option enabled in Settings. Say a teacher wishes to set a quiz for homework using their bot, they can remove all the quiz answers from the Auto-Complete suggestion list, thus preventing students from cheating.

There is no apparent limit to the number of responses your bot can give to a single user query, provided the amount of answers set does not supersede the question/answer limits for your account type.

Best of luck!