-: AI chatbots are transforming customer support
because they provide instant responses, reduce costs,
and improve customer satisfaction all while working 24/7.
In this lesson, we'll explore how to set up
a custom AI chatbot using Mendable.ai,
a platform that makes deploying a chatbot
to your website quick and seamless.
You can get started for free,
test it out and upgrade your account down the road,
so let's check it out.
Before we jump into the setup,
let's talk about why AI powered chatbots are a game changer.
Imagine running a small business
where your customers have tons of questions every day.
Instead of hiring a big support team
to answer the same queries repeatedly,
a chatbot handles most of the workload
for you automatically.
Think of it as your virtual assistant that never sleeps.
These bots go beyond simple FAQ responses.
They can pull information
from your company's knowledge base,
understand complex customer inquiries,
and even escalate issues to a human agent when necessary.
That means faster responses for your customers
and lower costs for your business.
Of course, not all chatbots are created equal.
Some offer more advanced capabilities
or are easier to set up depending on your technical skill.
For this, we've chosen Mendable.ai
because it's user-friendly, free to try
and perfect for quickly deploying a professional chatbot.
First, head over to Mendable.ai and sign up.
The platform is designed for non-technical users,
so no coding is required at all.
You can choose your preferred signup method,
Google login, SSO, or email and password.
Complete the CAPTCHA, hit signup and you're in.
Next, set up your account.
Start by naming your organization
and selecting a storage location for your data.
We'll skip some optional fields for now
to focus on the essentials,
but feel free to explore these settings on your own.
Now, let's invite collaborators who will help build
and manage the chatbot project.
This is a great way to get your team involved.
Finally, it is time for the exciting part,
setting up your chatbot.
Begin by selecting a data source to feed to the bot.
Mendable offers various options
including public GitHub repositories,
website links, YouTube videos, FAQs, and more.
For this example, we'll select website slash docs
as our data source.
Paste your website's URL,
let's say leapyearlearning.ai, into the provided field.
Leave the crawler settings as default, then click Ingest.
This uploads your support documents
and trains the chatbots to respond accurately.
Common materials you might wanna upload
include just like FAQs, product manuals,
or any content your customers typically ask about.
Click Ingest again to approve the data source links.
Now sit tight while Mendable works its magic
and trains the chatbot.
And that was quick.
The chat bot is ready for testing in just seconds.
Let's start by testing known data from the website
and throwing in a curve ball
to see how it handles missing information.
First, let's take a quick look at the website
to identify some stats
or details that we can ask the chatbot about.
For example, the site has our course statistics
prominently displayed, but after scrolling all the way down
and checking the other tabs,
we notice the course names aren't mentioned anywhere,
so let's first ask the chatbot what are the course names
and then what are the statistics on your courses?
As expected, the chatbot can't provide an answer
for the courses' names since the data wasn't available,
but it accurately retrieved statistics and their sources,
which is pretty cool for a tool set up
in just a few minutes.
After testing, head to the dashboard by clicking the button.
This is where you can manage all your projects.
Select the three dots on your recent projects
to edit settings,
and once you've made your changes, hit Save.
Now go to the quick start section,
clicking the house icon on the left of your interface.
Here you'll find clear step-by-step instructions
for deploying your chatbot.
Keep your account keys and extra resources.
To continue, let's complete the final testing phase
by asking the chatbot five questions.
Click Ask Five Questions to access the workshop.
On the right, you'll see settings for customizing
the chatbot's behavior, tone, and instructions.
On the left, you'll find the chatbot widget
for testing responses.
Customizing the bot's prompt is crucial.
It should match your brand's personality,
whether that's professional, friendly, or playful.
Let's use the opportunity
to add the tone of voice we created on the previous lesson.
Paste it here.
You can edit the bot's full prompt
and fine tune its response
or select Mendable's verified templates
and adapt them to your needs.
Additionally, you can choose between different AI models,
each with varying credit costs.
Here we have Claude 2, GPT 4 and GPT 3.5.
You can also tweak data sources and response lengths
to optimize your performance.
Now that we've customized the bot,
back to testing so we can proceed to deployment.
So we've successfully created, tested,
and customized a chatbot
trained on our company's example data.
In the next part of this lesson,
we'll go hands on with Mendable.ai again,
walking through the exact steps
to finalize and deploy the chatbot.
By the end, you'll have a fully functional AI assistant
ready to support your customers.