Teach it about your business

Three places it looks

• Your website. Read automatically when you build the receptionist. You can read it again any time, or add other pages.
• Documents you upload. Price lists, brochures, policies, a menu. PDF, Word or plain text.
• Questions and answers you type in. The quickest way to fix one wrong answer or add one fact.

All of this is under Knowledge in the dashboard, and also inside each receptionist under the Knowledge base ability.

Ideas: what to upload

Anything you would hand to a new member of staff on their first day. Some examples:

• A car dealer: the stock list. Callers ask what is in, and it tells them the price, the spec and the mileage, and books a viewing.
• A shop or brand: the product list with prices, sizes and stock, and how to order on the website.
• A plumber, electrician or builder: the services you offer, call-out charges and the areas you cover.
• A solicitor or accountant: your services, fees, and who handles what.
• An aesthetics clinic or salon: the treatment menu with prices and how long each takes.
• A restaurant or venue: the menu and opening times. It offers to read callers what is on and asks if they would like a table booked.
• A sales team: product sheets and data, so it explains and compares and sends people to the right page to order.
• Any business: opening hours, prices, delivery and returns, directions, and the questions you get every day.
• Your staff training guides and phone scripts, so it answers the way you would.

Add a document

1. Open Knowledge, or open your receptionist and choose Knowledge base.
2. Press Upload and choose the file.
3. Wait a moment. The receptionist pulls out the questions it can now answer and lists them.
4. Read through the list. Change any answer by clicking into it, or delete one that is wrong.

A document only works if its text can be selected. A scanned picture of a price list cannot be read. If you can highlight the words in the file, it is fine.

Add a question and answer

Write the question the way a caller would say it, and keep the answer to a sentence or two. One question per entry. Ten short entries beat one long one.

• Good: Do you do emergency call-outs? Yes, 24 hours a day. There is a call-out fee of £80 after 6pm.
• Less good: Services. We provide a wide range of plumbing and heating services across the region.

Questions it could not answer

When a caller asks something the receptionist does not know, it says so, offers to take a message, and writes the question down. Those questions appear under Knowledge so you can answer them once and they are answered forever. Check that list in your first few weeks.

Opening hours

Under Settings, fill in your hours for each day. The receptionist tells callers when you are open and it matters for bookings. Leave a day blank if you are closed.

Facts or instructions: which goes where

Facts go in Knowledge: prices, hours, addresses, what you do, who does what. Instructions on how to behave go under What it does: its job, the playbooks for your trade and your own rules, such as what to say about prices, when to put someone through, how formal to be. If it can change or must be said exactly, it is a fact.