Tell them first
Discovering a chatbot from a customer is a poor introduction and it sets exactly the wrong tone.
Ten minutes in a team meeting before launch covers it and turns the people who answer enquiries into the people who improve it.
What to cover
- What it answers, and what it always passes on
- Where handovers and leads arrive, and who checks them
- How to report a wrong answer, in one step
- That it exists to remove the repetitive questions, not the jobs
The fourth point should be said plainly. People will wonder regardless; not addressing it leaves them to assume the worst.
Make reporting a wrong answer trivial
The people who handle enquiries will spot bad answers before anyone else. Give them a one-step way to flag it — a message to a named person is enough.
If reporting is effort, they will stop, and you lose your best source of quality feedback.
Share the log with them
- They will recognise most of the unanswered questions immediately
- They usually know the correct answers already
- It makes them part of improving it rather than subject to it
- It is also a good argument for writing things down at last
Set expectations about handovers
Somebody must own the handover queue. An unowned queue means a customer told a person would reply and nobody did, which is worse than having no chat at all.
Name the person, agree a response time, and check it in the first fortnight.