Would you like to have your chatbot interact with calling customers for information or support?

Keep reading, that exactly what we’re going to do.

The Phone Voice Channel

Starting today, Xenioo supports a brand new Phone Voice Channel.

This new channel lets you integrate with a phone provider that can connect your chatbot to any number.

The very same chatbot you’ve used to reach your customers on WhatsApp? It’s already fine for becoming a phone assistant!

Using the very same approach used for WhatsApp chatbots, Xenioo has created an integration layer that removes all your worries about platform changes and technology shifts by providing a clear providers selection.

While you focus on creating the best conversational experience possible, we keep looking for the top service provider technologies.

Setting up your phone chatbot

A phone chatbot is very similar to a typical voice chatbot: everything happens in a real-time conversation where there is no buttons, link or any other type of visual cues.

Following the typical WhatsApp guidelines or Alexa and Google Assistant examples, you’ll create a chatbot fully ready to be configured.

After you’ve designed your chatbot, you need to set up a provider account. Currently, Xenioo supports Twilio as a provider, with more coming in the next months.

Setting up a Twilio account is fast and free.

Once you’ve created your Twilio account, you can configure the Xenioo publishing dialog. Click on the Twilio Dashboard link to display your account global data and from there, copy the Account SID and Auth Token values in the Xenioo Phone Voice Channel fields.

Testing your chatbot

Once all fields are set, click on the usual Publish button to bring your chatbot to life.

Behind the scenes, Xenioo will connect to your provider and automatically create an automated responder based on your design flow.
The Twilio responder is called Autopilot and after publishing, you will immediately see a new bot created for you. You don’t need to configure anything: Xenioo has done all the hard work for you.

That’s it! You can already test your chatbot in the Twilio Autopilot simulator and see how the conversation goes. You can go back and forth from voice testing to Xenioo design while you’re fine-tuning your flow until your chatbot is perfect.

Differently than Alexa, our chatbot is going to receive 100% of the text that is detected through the phone. This means that any type of input is supported, not just standard NLP expressions.

Attaching to a phone number

Once you’re satisfied with your chatbot conversational skills, you can proceed to attach it to a phone number.

In order to do so, you’ve first to get the Autopilot endpoint: we will need it to let our phone number know that everything goes to an endpoint.

Just click on your Autopilot bot and then click on Channels. In the list of channels, click on Programmable Voice. The page will display something similar to the picture below.

Copy the long Url you see and move to your phone numbers configuration. From there all you need to do is just buy a phone number in the country you prefer and paste the Voice Url you just copied in the Telephone configuration field with the very same name.

Save everything and your phone assistant is ready!

You can already call the number you’ve just configured and have a chat with your bot!

Ring! Hello?

Are you ready to create your first real-time voice support bot? We’re looking forward to seeing what you can achieve using this brand new channel.

Remember to share your thoughts on our Facebook group or write to our team if you need any kind of support!

The post Making Your Chatbot Reply To Phone Calls appeared first on Xenioo.

You can follow our lesson directly from the video below. At the end of the post you will find a Xenioo bot file that simply restores the example bot into your account for playback and testing. Let’s start!

Button Cards

The first component we will be checking out is the Button Card Action.

This action will display a variable amount of text (it will be split into multiple lines if necessary), as well as multiple buttons all grouped in a single frame.

We’ve already seen Quick Action Buttons but these buttons are different in two ways: first, they’re going to appear attached to the text content and second, they can be more than just a Postback to the bot.

You can, in fact, have Url buttons, that will redirect the user to another website, Phone buttons, that will activate a phone call or Share buttons that will activate the sharing of the content.

Much like we’ve seen in our previous lessons, Xenioo utilizes a component approach: the Button Card action contains only the basic properties and all the required content can be attached by adding more operations.

Go ahead and add more buttons to your Buttons Card.

Notice how the list of available operations changes? Xenioo will always filter your available actions and operations based on the most suitable, that way, you always have the content you need readily available without confusion.

Carousel

A carousel is an horizontal list of cards that can be shuffled to display different content. Ideally, each cart contains a different item that the user can browse from left and right.

Each card of the carousel can contain an image that will take most of the space, a title, a description and up to three different buttons.

As you will see in the video, with Xenioo you can build the carousel card by incrementally adding multiple components to create the exact final result you want. 

To simplify things, remember that you can expand and collapse each action and sub-operation by just clicking on each corresponding icon in the properties panel.

Items List

Lists are another multiple content display mechanism.

Instead of displaying images and buttons shifting from right to left, an Items List Action will display all items in an ordered table with smaller images and buttons. While the carousel may be ideal for bigger, image related content, the list is surely more suitable for a products list or a basket recap.

There’s no real limit to the number of items that can go in a list but keep in mind that the user may have limited vertical space in the chat area.

Choosing your buttons

While Postback and Url buttons are supported on all channels and platforms, Phone and Share buttons are not.

A Phone button used on a desktop browser chatbot may activate a Skype call or some kind of messaging client but it is most likely to be blocked, ruining the user experience.

Conversely, a Share button is only supported by Facebook messenger, and will not be visible when using the same chatbot through browser or Slack.

Be mindful of these limitations when designing your card’s content with multi-platforms in mind.

Wrapping up

Knowing what type of content container is available for your chatbot is key to a meaningful information display.

In this lesson, we’ve learned how you can display content in advanced and dynamic ways. 

As with all our lessons, you can find the chatbot sample in your Xenioo account so that you can import it to further experiment and learn.

The post TUTORIAL #4: Using button groups, cards and carousel appeared first on Xenioo.

You can follow our lesson directly from the video below. At the end of the post you will find a Xenioo bot file that simply restores the example bot into your account for playback and testing. Let’s start!

Button Cards

The first component we will be checking out is the Button Card Action. This action will display a variable amount of text (it will be split on multiple lines if necessary), as well as multiple buttons all grouped in a single frame. We’ve already seen Quick Action Buttons but these buttons are different in two ways: first, they’re going to appear attached to the text content and second, they can be more than just a Postback to the bot. You can, in fact, have Url buttons, that will redirect the user to another website. Phone buttons, that will activate a phone call or share buttons that will activate the sharing of the content.

Much like we’ve seen in our previous lessons, Xenioo utilizes a component approach: the Button Card action contains only the basic properties and all the required content can be attached by adding more operations. Go ahead and add more buttons to your Buttons Card. Notice how the list of available operations changes? Xenioo will always filter your available actions and operations based on the most suitable, that way, you always have the content you need readily available without confusion.

Carousel

A carousel is an horizontal list of cards that can be shuffled to display different content. Ideally, each cart contains a different item that the user can browse from left and right.

Each card of the carousel can contain an image that will take most of the space, a title, a description and up to three different buttons. As you will see in the video, with Xenioo you can build the carousel card by incrementally adding multiple components to create the exact final result you want. To simplify things, remember that you can expand and collapse each action and sub-operation by just clicking on each corresponding icon in the properties panel.

Items List

Lists are another multiple content display mechanism. Instead of displaying images and buttons shifting from right to left, an Items List Action will display all items in an ordered table with smaller images and buttons. While the carousel may be ideal for bigger, image related content, the list is surely more suitable for a products list or a basket recap.

There’s no real limit to the number of items that can go in a list but keep in mind that the user may have limited vertical space in the chat area.

Choosing your Buttons

While Postback and Url buttons are supported on all channels and platforms, Phone and Share buttons are not. A phone button used on a desktop browser chatbot may activate a Skype call or some kind of messaging client but it is most likely to be blocked, ruining the user experience. Conversely, a share button is only supported by Facebook messenger, and will not be visible when using the same chatbot through browser or Slack.
Be mindful of these limitations when designing your card’s content with multi-platforms in mind.

Knowing what type of content container is available for your chatbot is key to a meaningful information display. In this lesson we’ve learned how you can display content in advanced and dynamic ways. 

You can find this chatbot in the Templates section of your Xenioo account. From there you can easily restore the chabot to try the explained features at will.

The post LEZIONE #4: usare bottoni, gruppi di bottoni, schede e caroselli appeared first on Xenioo.