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Almost every bad answer has one of three causes, and each is fixed in a different place:
  • The agent didn’t have the fact. Fix it in Knowledge.
  • The agent was told something untrue. Fix it in the instructions, or in the out-of-date source it came from.
  • The conversation needed something the agent couldn’t do, like reach a person or book a slot. Fix it under Actions or Channels.
Work out which one it is before you change anything. Rewriting instructions that were never the problem is the most common way to waste an afternoon.

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Step 1: Find the exact sentence

Open the conversation in Conversations and find the sentence that was wrong. Not the general shape of the problem, the sentence itself. Read it next to the question the customer asked. That’s usually enough to tell which kind of problem you have. Then ask the same question yourself in the Playground. If the answer is wrong there too, you can reproduce it and fix it. If it’s right there, the difference is usually something the customer said earlier in the conversation, which is worth knowing too. Note which channel the conversation was on (see step 3).

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Step 2: Sort it

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Missing fact: it didn’t know

Run the customer’s question through Test a question.
  • No passages matched. The fact isn’t in the agent’s knowledge. Check it’s on your website at all, as a customer would find it. Often it isn’t, or it’s only in an image or an unlinked PDF. The agent was right not to guess. Add a note stating the fact plainly, in one or two sentences, using the customer’s words. This is the most common cause by far, and the cheapest to fix.
  • The page should be there but isn’t. Check the source is ready, not still in progress or failed. Then check the page is public: open it in a private window, signed out. Pages behind a login are never read. Also check the page wasn’t excluded, or past the crawl’s limits.
  • The right source comes back, but the passage is mostly navigation or footer text. The fact is buried. A short note that states it directly will be found first.
Also check that Knowledge — answer from your website & documents is ticked under How it talks. If it’s off, the agent never searches its knowledge.

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Wrong fact: it said something untrue

A confident, specific, wrong answer came from somewhere. Look in two places. 1. The instructions. Go to How it talks and read the instructions. Then check the channel’s own wording under Channels (see step 3). A price or opening time typed into the instructions is stated as fact whenever the knowledge doesn’t say otherwise, and a re-crawl never corrects it. Delete it from the instructions. If it’s true, put it in knowledge instead, where it has a source and can be updated. The agent’s setup checklist flags this: Prices and hours in the knowledge base appears when the instructions contain a price or a time. 2. Out-of-date knowledge. Run the question through Test a question. If an old page, file or note comes back, that’s your source. Your agent trusts knowledge over instructions: when they disagree on a price, an hour, an address or a policy, the knowledge answer wins. So an old price still on your website beats a correct one in the instructions. Re-read the site, or remove the old file or note.

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Wrong behaviour: right facts, wrong conduct

If the facts were right but the agent was too chatty, too blunt, off-topic, or promised something it shouldn’t, that’s what the instructions are for. Add a short rule about behaviour, such as “Never promise a delivery date. Say orders usually ship within two working days and offer to have someone confirm.” If the problem only happens on one channel, for example it’s fine in chat but wrong on the phone, give that channel its own instructions with wording per channel instead of changing everyone’s. Some things instructions can’t change. See what instructions can’t do.

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Missing capability: it couldn’t do what was needed

If the customer asked for a person, a booking or an order status and got nowhere, check that the agent has a way to do it:
1

Chat and email: Request a human

Under Actions, is Request a human switched on? It’s off on a new agent. If it’s limited by Business hours, then outside those hours the agent offers to take a message instead. See Request a human.
2

Phone: a transfer number

Under Actions, is Hand calls to you switched on? And under Channels → Phone, is there a number in Transfer live calls to (optional) that someone actually answers? Without both, the agent can’t transfer calls. It tells the caller so and offers to take a message. See Hand calls to you.
3

Bookings and lookups

To book meetings or look something up in your own systems, the agent needs a Book meetings or API call action. Instructions alone can’t give it one.
Check this on every agent you run, not just the one that failed. An empty transfer number goes unnoticed until a real customer needs it.

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Step 3: Check the channel

Each channel (chat, phone, email) can have its own instructions instead of sharing the agent’s. If an answer is wrong on one channel only, open Channels, go to that channel, and check its Instructions card. If Sync with the agent’s instructions is off, that channel ignores changes made under How it talks. See Wording per channel.

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Step 4: Re-ask

Every fix ends the same way: ask the exact same question again, in Test a question for knowledge fixes and in the Playground for everything else. Changes to How it talks need to be saved before the Playground uses them. If the answer is still wrong after adding a note that states the fact plainly, and Test a question shows the note coming back, tell us. That’s a problem for us to fix, not a problem with your setup.