Alternate invocations are similar questions or statements with the same goal. For example:
Question: How do I apply for financial aid?
Alternate Invocation: What is the application process for financial aid?
Adding alternate invocations to questions helps the chatbot understand the many different ways users might ask the same question. The AI Conversation Design team adds alternate invocations to General Library and client custom questions on behalf of our clients so they can spend less time thinking about how their users might ask questions, and can focus that energy on developing great content. On any given day, the AI Conversation Design team creates hundreds of examples in addition to those submitted by our clients.
Every time a client submits a new question, the question comes through the moderation queue, where it is evaluated for functionality and potential AI conflicts. As the AI Conversation Design team reviews a newly-submitted question, they determine if the question needs to be connected to an existing General Library or client custom question.
In cases where the AI Conversation Design Team connects a new question to an existing question, they are adding an alternate invocation based on this new phrasing. If the team is not able to connect a new question to an existing question, they add several alternate invocations to this new client custom question on the client's behalf.
If you think you may have a new way to ask a question, be sure to test your phrasing first to see if the chatbot understands your question. You can test your phrasing by clicking on the speech bubble icon in the upper right-hand corner of the admin home screen. If you receive an answer from the knowledge base or relevant suggestion boxes then the chatbot understands what you asked and you have had a successful interaction.
If you receive an IDK (“I Don’t Know”) response to a question you would like the chatbot to be able to answer, click on the Add a Response + button at the bottom of the interaction. You can then create a new question and response. Saving this question will submit it to the moderation queue for the AI Conversation Design team to review.
You do not need to create and submit every possible phrasing of a question. Submitting a few examples helps to train our AI model, Over time, your chatbot will continue to learn additional phrasings.