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Best practices: Setting up Answer Bot triggers, views, and workflows

Zendesk has renamed our bot capabilities. Answer Bot is now Zendesk bots, Flow Builder is bot builder, and Article Recommendations are autoreplies. The Zendesk UI and documentation is in the process of being updated.

Figuring out the best way to set up Answer Bot triggers, automations, views, and tags to track autoreply usage can be confusing for a lot of users. In this article, we're offering some recommendations for the following situations:

Automatic tags

There are four tags that the Answer Bot feature automatically adds to tickets to simplify setting up of new triggers and automation.  Use the below table to understand what these tags are and when they are added.

Ticket tag name 

When is it added? 

ab_suggest_false 

Added when Answer Bot is successfully triggered but failed to find any matching articles

ab_suggest_true

Added when Answer Bot successfully made an article suggestion 

ab_marked_unhelpful

Added when the end user indicated that the suggestion was unhelpful 

ab_resolved 

Added when the end user marks the suggestion as helpful. 

Please note that if you are using the answer_bot_fired tag, your existing triggers will continue to work as it does today. 

Basic tagging

Basic tagging is important for almost all configurations and best practices for Answer Bot. To allow us to optimize how triggers are fired, set up new triggers to take new actions, or change automations, we have to start with some basic tag manipulation:

  1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Business Rules > Triggers.
  2. For every trigger listed in the Answer Bot trigger section, select Edit.
  3. Scroll down to the bottom of the trigger, to the Actions section and select Add Action.
  4. Select Add tags from the drop-down list and then insert the tag answer_bot_fired.
  5. Save the trigger.

Now all tickets autoreplies have fired on will have the answer_bot_fired tag and we can easily create a view to see them:

  1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Manage > Views.
  2. Create a new view - call it Answer Bot Tickets
  3. Set the conditions:
    • Status | Less than | Closed
    • Tags | Contains at least one of the following |  answer_bot_fired

Viewing solved tickets 

In this step, you'll create a view to see all tickets that an end user has resolved based on an Answer Bot suggestion. Tickets an end user has marked as solved by an Answer Bot suggestion are automatically given the ab_resolved tag.

  1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Manage > Views.
  2. Create a new view - call it Answer Bot Solved Tickets
  3. Set the conditions:
    • Status | Greater than | On-hold (or Pending, if on-hold status is not available for your account)
    • Tags | Contains at least one of the following | ab_resolved

Removing tags from reopened Answer Bot tickets

You could even take this one step further and add another trigger to remove the ab_resolved tag, if a ticket is reopened:

  1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Business Rules > Triggers.
  2. Create a new trigger - call it Answer Bot: Tag as Reopened
  3. Set the conditions:
    • Status | Changed from | Solved
    • Status | Not changed to | Closed
    • Tags | Contains at least one of the following | ab_resolved
  4. Add the following Actions:
    • Select Add tags from the drop-down list and then insert the tag answer_bot_reopen.
    • Select Remove tags from the drop-down list and then insert the tag ab_resolved - this will remove those tags.
  5. Save the trigger.

Following up when customers self-solve

Extending on the previous steps, you can also add another action to send the requester a follow-up email to confirm that their request has been marked as solved.

  1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Business Rules > Triggers.
  2. Create the trigger in the previous step, or edit the Answer Bot: Tag as solved trigger by adding a new action:
    • Email user | (requester)
    • Enter an email subject and body
  3. Save the trigger. 

Creating an Answer Bot trigger for follow-up tickets 

In some situations, you may want to check in on a closed ticket. Closed tickets cannot be reopened, so to continue the conversation (rather than starting a new one) you need to create a follow-up ticket.

When you create a follow-up ticket, all of the closed ticket's information, including tags, is carried over into the new ticket. That means that the default ab_resolved tag is applied to the follow-up ticket, which prevents Answer Bot from firing on the new ticket. This is fine if you do not need Answer Bot to work on the new ticket; however, if you want to include Answer Bot suggestions in the ticket notifications, you'll need to remove the ab_resolved tag.

To create a trigger removing the ab_resolved tag from a follow-up ticket

  1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Business Rules > Triggers.
  2. Create a new trigger - call it Answer Bot: Follow_up
  3. Set the conditions:
    • Ticket | Is | Created
    • Channel | Is | Closed ticket
    • Tags | Contain | ab_resolved
  4. Add the following Actions:
    • Remove tags | ab_resolved  ab_suggest_false  ab_suggest_true  ab_marked_unhelpful
  5. Save the trigger.

Suppressing Customer Satisfaction surveys on Answer Bot tickets

Customer Satisfaction surveys were designed primarily for when human agents have been involved in solving the ticket. Many customers choose to disable satisfaction surveys for Answer Bot tickets. This step assumes that you have tagged tickets solved by Answer Bot with the answer_bot_solved tag.

  1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Business Rules > Automations.
  2. Open the automation that's been set up to send Satisfaction surveys, by default it's called Request customer satisfaction rating (System Automation).
  3. Add a new condition:
    • Tags | Contains none of the following | answer_bot_solved
  4. Save the automation.
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