How it works

With BrightBot you can quickly add a chat widget to your website, which your prospects and customers can use to ask questions about your organisation or solution. The questions are answered automatically by a AI-powered chatbot. A human from your team can take over a chat at any time.

You ensure the chatbot gives the right responses by providing it with "training text" - snippets of information on subjects you think your audience will ask questions about. As a simple example, let's say you enter the following training text snippet:

"ABC Limited is based in Brighton, UK. We make widgets that are used by retail brands throughout the world, including DeF PLC and GhI & Co"

Your chatbot will then be able to respond accurately to questions such as "What does ABC Limited do?", "Where are you based?" and "Who do you work with?"

Tips for getting the most out of BrightBot:

1. ●  Try to enter training text for all the subjects your audience may want to chat about.
2. ●  Monitor the chats. If someone asks a question about a subject you didn't anticipate, add some training text about it.
3. ●  BrightBot works by providing the AI with the most relevant training text items as context for answering the given question. It does not provide all the training text items to the AI for every question (only the most relevant). Therefore, it will struggle to answer questions that require every training text item as context.
4. ●  The AI should say "I don't know" if it doesn't have relevant context, but if it claims your product or service does something it doesn't, make sure you add training text so it can give the correct response next time.

Getting started

Get a BrightBot account

The first step is to sign up for a BrightBot account. You can start with a free trial, so you can see the value BrightBot will bring to your business before you pay anything, and then upgrade to a paid account.

Adding details about your company or solution

The chatbot needs to know some information about the company or solution it is answering questions about. You need to add the name, website and a help email address in the "Settings" section before you deploy your chatbot.

Adding training text

Once you have signed in to your BrightBot account, you need to add some training text so the chatbot knows how to answer the questions your audience might ask. Simply go to "Training text" in the left-hand menu and click the button "Add training text" to add a text item.

Each training text item can be a maximum length of 250 words. If that's not long enough don't worry - just break your text into multiple items.

You can also upload training text items from a CSV file:

1. ●  The file should contain just one column (the text) and a row for each text item
2. ●  It should be in CSV (plain-text) format. If it's easier, just create a single column spreadsheet in Excel or Google Sheets and then save/download as a CSV file
3. ●  Each text item (i.e. each row) should be no longer than 250 characters
4. ●  The file should contain no more than 10,000 rows
5. ●  Don't include a header row.

Do not upload the same file more than once - if you do then each text item will be added multiple times.

Publishing your training texts

When you add or edit training text items, they will first be in an "unpublished" state. In order to send them to the AI to "train" it, you need to publish the text items by going to "Publish & Test".

Your BrightBot plan allows you to publish a certain number of text items per month, so make sure you have finished editing items before you publish them.

Testing your chatbot

An embedded version of your chatbot is included on the "Publish & Test" page, which you can use to ask your chatbot questions to test its responses. Note that questions you ask count towards your monthly quota of questions.

Embedding your chatbot on your website

On the "Embed" page you will see the code you need to include your chatbot on your website.

Viewing the chats

You can monitor the conversations your chatbot has had on the "Chats" page. It's a good idea to check this regularly to see how the chatbot is doing. Look out for people asking questions you didn't anticipate as you can then add training text so your chatbot knows what to say next time.

Responding to people manually

If someone asks to speak to a human, the chatbot will ask for their email address. If they provide their email address then you will receive an email from BrightBot to let you know to get in touch with them.

When a chat is first started, you will be alerted by email and, if you have BrightBot open in a tab at the time, by a ping sound in your browser.

If you are available, you can then monitor the chat in real time and take over if you want i.e. to answer the questions yourself. Once you have taken over, the AI will no longer respond to that chat.

Configuring the widget

There are some optional parameters you can include in the embed code for the widget:

1. ●  brandPrimaryColor : to change the primary colour of the widget to match your brand
2. ●  brandSecondaryColor : to change the secondary colour of the widget
3. ●  title : to change the title shown at the top of the chat window
4. ●  subTitle : to change the subtitle shown under the title.

You can also change the position and size of the widget. See the "Embed" page within the BrightBot appliation for full details.

How our pricing plans work

Our pricing is based on two factors:

1. ●  How many text items you publish per month
2. ●  How many answers the chatbot (AI) makes.

Your pricing plan will come with a limits for each of these. You can see the limits, and how much you have used so far, on the "Accounts" page. If you want to increase your limits then just get in touch.