Getting Started with Salesa

Looking to implement chatbots in your business but don't know how to get started?

Look no further.

Chatbots can help your business run without you actually having to be there. You can use chatbots in your website to interact with your user and solve their issues or educate them about your products. You can implement them in your own software or have them approach people to sell your products and services on your behalf.

Salesa chatbots have been designed to be used for business primarily and the way you operate them reflects that.

First and foremost, you need to signup. You can signup for free and you will be automatically subscribed to a free plan which you use for as long as you want.

Smaller businesses will find the free plan sufficient and we recommend upgrading only if you are looking to grow.

After you sign up, you will be taken to your dashboard. Your dashboard is the place where you can manage your bots, your customers and your account all in one place. You can access it by clicking on your profile name at the top right of your screen.

Your dashboard overview will display your auth tokens and shortcuts to your bot management, customer management (CRM), and your subscription pages. Clicking on the 'Show Auth Tokens' button will expand to show your auth token and API token. Click on the 'Copy to Clipboard' button to copy. Keep them safe and confidential to prevent misuse.

Go to the bot management page to create your first bot. Follow the link to create your bot and it will appear on the bot management page as soon as you are done.

The green button with the + Training to the right of your bot name takes you to the bot training page. Your bot can understand what is being said to it, but it doesn't know what you want it to do and say. Bot training is simply you telling the bot how you want it to talk to your customers or users.

There are 2 important terms to understand in bot training - training profiles and conversation flows.

Think of training profiles as different tasks of a bot. If you want a bot to provide customer support, for instance, you can use 1 training profile for that purpose. If you also want it to do sales for you, you will want to create a second training profile for sales. The number of training profiles you are allowed depends on your subscription.

Conversation flows can be created freely. A conversation flow is simply a sample sequence of sentences that you expect between the customer and your bot. For example, look at the following 2 conversation flows.

Sample conversation flow 1

Bot: Do you have a moment?

Customer: Yeah, sure.

Bot: Great! ...

Sample conversation flow 2

Bot: Do you have a moment?

Customer: I'm busy right now.

Bot: Ok, I'll try later.

As you can see, conversation flows are basically how you expect a specific conversation to play out. Each conversation flow is a branch of how the conversation might play out.

When your bot asks the customer "Do you have a moment?" and gets back a reply, it changes its response based on whether the customer said yes or no.

Create as many conversation flows as you want and make as complex or simple as needed.

Now, once you click on the + Training button, you will be taken to your first conversation flow. In the control panel to the left of the screen, you will find the option to add a new sentence or select from an existing sentence. Since you have no existing sentences, create a new one.

You can drag around the sentence boxes to change the order of the conversation. Just make sure to click on save once you have made the changes. The 'said by' tag specifies whether you expect the bot or your customer to say that sentence. Create your conversation flow.

You can create more flows or training profiles. Just look at the lower half of the control panel on the left.

Once you are satisfied with your training, it's time to deploy the bot. Check the 'Publish Training' checkbox and click on save. The 'Publish Training' toggle controls whether your conversation flow is a draft or whether it is ready to be used by the bot.

Read this article to learn how to deploy your bot on your website, on Whatsapp and text messaging, or implement in your own code.