Launching the Virtual Assistant Best Practices 

The purpose of this article is to help you launch your virtual assistant effectively so it can begin successfully answering questions for your users right away. To help you navigate this article we have broken it down into the following sections:

• Embedding the Virtual Assistant
• Welcome Message
• Launcher Settings

Embedding the Virtual Assistant

To maximize visibility and usage, we recommend embedding the virtual assistant launcher onto all of the web pages corresponding to the virtual assistant AI Department Learning Models your institution has purchased. 

Example: If you have purchased the Financial Aid and Admissions AI Department Learning Models, consider embedding the virtual assistant onto all of the web pages associated with those offices, and not just an office's landing page.

Embedding the virtual assistant on multiple pages improves the user experience by allowing users to launch, minimize, and re-engage with the virtual assistant organically regardless of where they are on an office's site. Requiring users to navigate away from the web page they are currently on in order to engage the virtual assistant requires additional clicks and may increase the risk of conversation abandonment. 

For more information about embedding your virtual assistant, please review the Embedding the Virtual Assistant article.

Your virtual assistant's analytics dashboard displays high-level statistics that provide an overview of your virtual assistant's usage and highlights top topics and trends, including the top five web pages from which virtual assistant users open your virtual assistant. Periodically monitoring this information provides insight into user behavior that can be used to modify embedding locations as needed. 

For more information about reviewing virtual assistant usage, please review the Virtual Assistant Analytics article.

Welcome Message

Using your virtual assistant's Welcome Message to provide information about the types of questions your virtual assistant can answer and the departments it supports can reduce user frustration and allow your users to get the answers they need more quickly.

Ocelot has also created a How to Effectively Use the Virtual Assistant video that can be added to your virtual assistant's Welcome Message to provide users with a brief overview of the best way to ask questions to find the information they are looking for.

If your virtual assistant is multilingual, consider adding text in any other supported language to your Welcome Message so users know right away that they can engage the virtual assistant in a language other than English. 

Example: "Hi, my name is [virtual assistant]! I'm a virtual assistant here to help with your questions in English and Spanish! Hola, mi nombre es [virtual assistant]! ¡Soy un virtual assistant aquî para ayudarlo con sus preguntas en inglés o españo!"

Launcher Settings

Ocelot recommends using the "Callout Bubble" style launcher to increase virtual assistant usage.

For more information about customizing launcher settings, please review the Navigating the Admin: Look & Feel Page article.

Because your virtual assistant is not equipped to answer questions about departments outside of your contract, we advise against embedding the virtual assistant launcher on web pages that are not associated with offices in your institution's contract. 

Example: Do not embed your virtual assistant on your institution's housing-related web pages if you have not purchased the Housing AI Department Learning Model.