Welcome to the SoundHound Smart Answering eGuide on how to use Smart Answers.
Smart Answers are your company’s business details that your AI voice assistant uses to respond to callers’ questions. They provide information about your business that best satisfies the customer’s query, such as “What hours are you open?” or “Is there parking?”
Smart Answers are created and stored in your AI Knowledge Base, which is the repository of knowledge about your business. Smart Answering creates your AI Knowledge Base automatically during onboarding. If you haven’t done so already, visit the Smart Answering eGuide, Part 2.
To create a friendly and responsive AI voice assistant that responds accurately to your callers’ requests, you’ll want to customize and fine-tune your Smart Answers with your own knowledge of what’s unique and special about your business.
Here’s what you can expect in this guide:
- What are Smart Answers?
- Review of the AI Knowledge Base
- Tips for Creating Effective Smart Answers
- Examples of how to add or modify Smart Answers
Check out this video for a snapshot of effective techniques to enhance your Smart Answers:
What Are Smart Answers?
If you’ve completed your onboarding, you should have an initial AI Knowledge Base that our AI created for you. Here’s an example:
The AI Knowledge Base is the collection of all information about your business relevant to customer queries and can be used for answering caller questions and handling their requests. You can add information in a way that feels natural through the Add Knowledge section, and you can even add Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) in question/answer format by pressing the + icon to the right of the FAQ section.
As shown in the diagram, Smart Answers are the editable business details that your AI voice assistant uses to respond to caller requests. The second major feature in the AI Knowledge Base is Smart Actions (not shown), which carry out specific actions such as sending an SMS link to an appointment-setting page. For more information on Smart Actions, visit the Smart Actions tutorial
*When you set up your account, Smart Answering uses AI to gather as much information from your website as possible and places it into categories, as shown in the AI Knowledge Base illustration. Take time to review, confirm accuracy, and make updates as needed.
Adding or Modifying Smart Answers
Smart Answering offers you two ways to update or add new information to your labels:
- Let our AI do the work for you
- Type new information directly into label boxes
Let AI Do the Work for You – Using the Add Knowledge Box
The simplest way to get your business information into your voice assistant’s Knowledge Base is with AI. To do so, you’ll use the Add Knowledge box at the top of the AI Knowledge Base page:
- Click on the Add Knowledge button.
- An input box pops up.
- Type information into the box. Don’t worry about punctuation or style, our AI will use words that are relevant.
Present your business as you know best!
As you add information to the Add Knowledge box, consider how you want your AI voice assistant to engage with callers. Are there ways you do business that are unique and represent why customers love your business? Do you have unique names for your products or services? Weekly specials, community events, kids’ day? Take a moment and write down these details, then include this in the Add Knowledge box. You can also add information directly into Labels, as you’ll see below.
4. Click Preview. The AI voice assistant automatically organizes your labels based on the information you provide. As you can see below, it created 2 new labels, 1 in the Products and Services section and 1 in Policies.
5. Feel free to review these suggestions and make edits by clicking on the specific labels. Once satisfied, click on the Add button.
6. The new information is dropped into the Products and Services section. It marks the new labels as and turns each label’s left border green, indicating that you added and approved this content. Also, notice how the AI notes in red beside the Product and Services heading that 5 new labels have been added.
7. Test out the new information by clicking the Test it Now button at the top of the page. Ask the AI voice assistant, Linda, about one of the Smart Answers you just created, such as the price of a Shampoo + Blow Dry or Hair coloring to be sure it has captured the information accurately.
Type New Information Directly Into Label Boxes
Editing a Label
After reviewing your AI knowledge base page, or listening to Linda’s responses, you may decide to add more details to any of the existing information. In this example, you will see how to add more details about parking. Since Smart Answering already created a Label with no parking, we’ll edit the label directly.
Hover over the Parking Label. A box with 3 options appears (add link, edit Label, close edit box):
Click on the Edit icon. A box opens for editing.
Highlight “no” and type in: private parking in the back of the salon. Smart Answering provides a suggested label.
Once you click Add, Smart Answering adds it to the Location category.
Note how Smart Answering moved it to the first slot and notated it with the status “New”, denoting that you added it to the AI Knowledge Base.
You can Test it by re-dialing the number at the top and asking about parking.
Thanks for trying out one of the most exciting and powerful new technologies for small businesses. We’ll be reaching out as we add new features and capabilities to this revolutionary AI product.