Hatch Assistant Setup Guide

Get a walkthrough of all the steps you need to set up your first AI bot in Hatch.

Table of contents

• Overview - what is Hatch Assistant?
• Dashboard
• How to create a new bot
  • Bot templates
  • Duplicating a bot
  • Deleting a bot

• Business Profile
• Persona
• Campaigns
• Interactions
  • Questions
  • Bailout and Discard Rules
  • Objections
• Global Rules
  • Global vs Interaction-specific Rules
• Tools
• Bot testing, publishing, and editing
  • Sandbox
  • Answers to Interactions
  • Publish and unpublishing
  • Editing a live bot
  • Debugging

 

What is Hatch Assistant?

Hatch Assistant allows you to create custom AI agents that converse with your leads, prospects, and customers over text and then take the appropriate action in Hatch based on the conversation outcome. Each AI bot has a name, personality, and Hatch Campaign it is attached to. 

Hatch AI doesn't simply recommend responses or provide coaching for your agents; it actually converses with leads and customers just as a human agent would - and according to the rules and prompts you create. 

Hatch Assistant dashboard

Your Hatch Assistant dashboard has four main areas:

1. Sandbox: This is your testing environment where you can interact with your bot and make sure it says the right things. We cover the Sandbox in the Testing, Publishing, and Editing section of this article.
2. Chatbot Configuration: This is where you configure your Bot's Persona, Campaigns, Interactions, Rules, and Tools- all of which are covered in this article.
3. Answers to Interactions. This panel displays what information the Bot is collecting from the conversation. Covered in the Testing, Publishing, and Editing section of this article.
4. Manage Business Profile

 

How to create a new bot

To create a new bot, navigate to the Chatbot dropdown and click the plus sign. 

You can then choose between creating a bot from a template or creating the bot from scratch.

Note: Your bot has to be attached to a Campaign, so make sure that whatever Campaign you're using for the bot is created. 

Bot templates

Bot templates come with pre-configured prompts that you can customize. If you go with a template, you'll be asked to choose your industry, use case, and the Campaign you want to attach the bot to.

Here's what is available for bot templates

Industry

• Windows and doors
• Remodeling
• Concrete
• Home Builder
• Painters
• Bathroom Remodeling
• Landscaping (Hardscapes)
• Roofing
• Pest Control
• Gutter Services
• Siding
• Solar
• HVAC, Plumbing, and Electrician (all services)
• HVAC
• Plumbing
• Electrician

Use Case

• Appointment Confirmations
• Sales Follow Up
• Appointment Scheduler
• Speed to Lead

Duplicating a bot

If you have the perfect bot and you want to use it on another campaign, you can duplicate the bot and the script and rules will duplicate to a new bot.

 

Delete a bot

If you built a bot and no longer need it, delete it at any time.

Business Profile

Think of your Business Profile as a knowledge base for your bot to refer to.  You’ll train your bot with a specific set of questions to ask the customer, but customers can also ask your bot their own questions (like “Do you offer window repairs or just replacements?” or “What are your hours?”). The bot will use information in your business profile to answer these “off-script” questions.

How to create your business profile:

1. On the top right, click “Manage Business Profile”

2. Click “Create New Business Profile” 

3. Fill in your information

• Property: Each of the 10 components of your business profile (Business Name, Business
  Category, Business Hours, etc.)
• Value: This is what information you’ll fill in for each property.
• Description and Chatbot Instructions: Add any additional details here. Sometimes you’ll
  leave this section blank

Example

Property: Business Name

Value: Bache Exteriors

Chatbot instructions: (Leave empty)

Example

Property: Minimum Service Fee

Value: $75

Chatbot Instructions: This is the minimum service fee for any service appointment. If they move forward with the recommended service, we waive the fee.

Notes:

• You can come back to this screen to edit or delete a business profile at any time
• You can have multiple business profiles. If you have multiple locations, create a unique profile for each location. You may also wish to create separate profiles for separate services you offer, if that makes sense with your Hatch setup.

Persona

A persona refers to the way the bot behaves and interacts with customers. It’s the bot’s personality. The persona consists of the bot’s name, tone, and additional instructions.

There's also a Train Your Bot button, where you can train your bot on certain CRM details. Learn more about Train Your Bot here.

For example:

• Bot name: John Smithy
• Tone: professional and empathetic
• Persona: This is an optional field. We usually leave it blank unless we're having fun with it (such as "you use HVAC puns in every message")

Tone examples

• Professional
• Witty
• Friendly
• Empathetic
• Funny
• You can combine tones, i.e. “Professional and empathetic” or "Witty but professional"

Campaigns

This is where you will assign the bot to one of your Hatch Campaigns. It’s also where you set up the first message that will fire in your Sandbox conversation.

To assign a bot to a Campaign:

Start typing and the dropdown will give you existing Campaigns in your account to choose from.

Note that you can only have one bot per campaign. That's all you need though, since one bot can handle infinitely many conversations at once!

Campaign message

This is just the first message the bot will send to you in your Sandbox (test conversation). If you have a Launch Day text message created in the Campaign associated with that bot, this is the message that will populate in this box. If you don't have a text message written out yet in the Campaign, nothing will show.

You can edit the Campaign message to be anything you want for testing; but remember that the actual Launch message in the Campaign is the one that will send first when the bot is live.

Apply Message Template

Clicking this button will just fill in the chatbot's name wherever you have [[User First Name]].

Interactions

Interactions are the questions that your bot is responsible for asking the customer and getting an answer to. It’s your scripting! 

Interactions have four components:

1. Questions
2. Rules
3. Objection handling
4. Global rules

Interactions - Questions

These are the questions you want your bot to ask your customer so it can get the information it needs to qualify the contact and take the right action.

For every question, you also need to tell the bot what constitutes a valid response to a question. Here's what every question includes:

a. Question Tab: Where you will give the bot instructions on asking the question.

b. Outbound Generation: How you want the bot to ask the question. You have two options:

• Use AI: Let the bot come up with its own wording for the question (preferred)
• Used Forced Question: Have the bot follow your  exact script.

c. Question to Ask: Type the question you want the bot to ask the customer

d. Validate: Tell the bot what constitutes a valid answer (see examples)

Interaction example using a forced question

• Outbound Generation: Use Forced Question

• Say this exactly: Great! I would love to help you out. First, can I get your address so I can confirm that we service your area?
• Question to Ask: For their full home address
• Validate: full home address must include the street, city, state and zip code

Remember: Our AI Analyzer and Conflict Analyzer are built-in tools that will help you to set up your Interactions. 

Interactions - Bailout and Discard Rules

The Bailout and Discard Rules are what you want the bot to say when it detects each of those scenarios:

• A Bailout is when the customer needs to be connected with a human rep.
  
  
• A Discard is when a customer doesn’t meet your criteria.

For each of those scenarios, you have the option to input a Rule and an Output.

• The Rule tells the bot what kind of answer to the Interaction question will constitute a bailout
• The Output is what/how you want the bot to respond to the customer 

NOTE: These rules apply to only this Interaction ONLY. They are not the same as the Global Bailout/Discard rules in the Interactions tab.

 

Interaction + Rule example

• Interaction: Ask for the customer’s home address.
• Validate: Full address must include street, city, state, and zip.
• Bailout Rule: Bailout if the customer’s address is in Boston, Mass.
• Output: Let the customer know we don’t service that area, and if they have any projects in our service area, to text you back.
  
  

Interactions - Objections

An objection refers to when the customer objects to the specific Interaction question.

a. Objections Handling Tab: Used to instruct the bot what to say if a customer objects.

b. Type of use: How will the bot decide what to say?

• Use AI: Let AI come up with the wording.
• Use Forced Objection: Have the bot follow your exact script.

c. Say this exactly: Only if you choose “Use Forced Question”

Global Interactions

The Global Interactions  tab is where you tell the bot to look out for Bailout or Discard scenarios throughout the entire conversation, as opposed to just one Interaction.

These are global, meaning they apply to the entire conversation and reflect your general business standards. 

For example:

• If you detect the customer is no longer interested, say and do this...
• If the customer responds with END, say and do this...

Global Discard Rule example 

a. Rule: If you detect the customer is no longer interested in having this conversation

b. Output: Thank the customer and let them know to reach out if they have any questions or need help in the future.

The bot will then take action you have assigned as the Discard action for that bot. For a Global Bailout Rule, the bot would take the action assigned as the Bailout action for that bot. We cover both of those actions next. 

Rules

While your Interactions tell your bot what information to collect from the lead or customers, your Rules tell them what to do based on the information it collects. There are three outcomes:

• Success: The lead is qualified, so the bot will set the appointment.
• Bailout: The bot needs to pass the contact on to a human rep.
• Discard: The lead is not qualified, so the bot will politely end the conversation.

Global Rules vs Interaction-specific Rules

Note: These Rules are for the conversation as a whole. They are not the same as the Bailout and Discard rules that you can set within each Interaction.

For example, you may have a Discard rule set up within your "Ask for their project budget" Interaction, that tells your bot to part ways with the customer if their budget is below a certain amount. But you may have a global Discard rule set up that tells your bot to part ways with the customer if the customer says "stop" or "end" at any point in the conversation.

Creating a Global Rule

1. Click on the outcome you want to create the rule for. Success, Bailout, or Discard.
2. Choose an action: You have two options:
   1. Assign Column: The bot will move this conversation to a particular column in your Hatch Workspace 
   2. Assign User: The bot will assign this conversation to a user in your Hatch account
      
      
3. Specify which Column/User: You’ll get a drop-down of options to choose from.
4. Tell the bot what to say: You can provide a general instruction or tell the bot to “say this exactly:”

Example Rule for Success outcome

• Outcome: Success
• Choose an Action: Assign Column
• Column: Success
• Instructions: Say this exactly: “Thanks so much! Now, if you can, let me know a date and time that works for you for us to come out to visit you.”

Tools

The Tools tab is used to instruct your bot on how to keep following up when a conversation stalls. You can customize:

• How long the bot will wait before it reaches back out to a customer.
• How many times the bot will attempt to get in touch with the customer.
• The action the bot will take if it doesn’t get a response. It will follow your Rules tab.

Bot testing, publishing, and editing

1. Sandbox

This is your testing environment where you can interact with your bot and make sure it says the right things.

a. You'll use this to test your bot after you make a change, and also to test out different scenarios before launching the bot. 

• Test out the "happy path"
• Test missing information
• Test bailouts
• Test discards
• Test vague responses

b. You can reset the conversation as you make refinements so you can test each refinement.

Answers to Interactions

Use this to see that the bot is collecting the right information from the conversation.

a. If the data is collected: You get a green check.
b. If the data is not collected: It remains blank.

Publishing and Unpublishing

a. Publish: Will appear green after you fill in all of the campaigns and rules for your bot. You are ready to publish

b. Recap: Shows you everything you have set up, in a receipt.

If you want to completely unpublish a bot from having conversations, use this feature. Used only when completely turning the bot off, if you want to make changes but keep the bot live, use EDIT feature.

Editing a  published Bot

a. Edit: Allows the user to update interactions, prompts, and rules and then TEST how those changes affect the performance of the bot.The bot stays published while you make those changes.

b. Publish Changes: Now, your bot will apply these changes to any NEW conversations

Debugging

1. Go into the conversation card from your Workspace, and click on any PURPLE answer that didn’t match your expected result.

Here’s how to read the report:

a. Questions, Statement and Objection: Shows if the message is either a statement, question or objection AND the reason why.


b. Interaction Result: Shows the result of your prompt. In this example:

• Result: Full Address is INVALID
• Reason: Missing state and zip code.

c. Global Interactions: Shows if your Global Interaction was activated.