Set Up NLU and Action Fallback

There are two types of fallback. NLU and action fallback are for when your bot doesn't understand what the contact means or isn't sure what to do next. A third type of fallback is for rich messages, and is used when the channel doesn't support the rich content being sent.

Glossary

Concept	Definition	Example	What the Bot Does
Utterance	Anything a contact says in an interaction. Sometimes called a message.	"I lost my password." "What is my balance?" "Are you a bot?"	The bot uses Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to analyze each contact utterance to determine its meaning, or intent.
Intent	What the contact wants to communicate or accomplish. Every message the contact sends has an intent.	"I lost my password" has the intent of "reset password". "Hello" has the intent of "greeting".	The bot analyzes a contact's message using NLU This process expands on Natural Language Processing (NLP) to make decisions or take action based on what it understands. to determine the intent. Once it knows that, it can respond with a message of its own. You configure the response you want the bot to use for each intent.
Entity	A defined piece of information in a contact's message.	Person or product name, phone number, account number, location, and so on.	The bot uses NLU to identify entities in a contact's message. Entities help the bot understand what the contact's message means.
Slot	An entity extracted from a contact's message and saved for use in bot responses. Similar to a variable.	Creating a slot for contact name lets the bot use that name in responses during an interaction, making it more personal.	When configured to do so, the bot extracts an entity from a contact message and saves it in a slot. You can have the bot use this information later in the conversation.
Rule	Defines a bot's response to messages that don't change meaning with context.	Single-turn interactions with fixed responses: What are your hours? What is your address? Conversation building blocks: Greetings, good-byes, thank yous and transitions; simple yes/no questions; and acknowledgments. CXone Bot Builder comes with default intents and rules for several of these, including greetings, handover Any contact message that should trigger transfer to a live agent requests, and more. FAQs Insults and classic bot challenges	Rules are one of two ways you can configure how the bot responds to an intent. Rules are useful for certain kinds of intents, but not all intents.
Story	Trains a bot to handle an interaction based on message intent and conversational context.	In an interaction about a forgotten password, the bot would respond to, "How do I do that?" in one way. If the interaction were about creating a new account, the response would be quite different even though in both cases the contact is using the same words with the same intent – to get more information.	Stories are the second of two ways you can configure how the bot responds to an intent. Stories teach the bot how to use the context of the conversation to respond appropriately.
Bot Action	Anything a bot says or does while handling an interaction.	In an interaction about a forgotten password, the bot responds by sending the link to the password reset FAQ on the website. When a contact expresses frustration, such as "I don't understand! It's not working!!!" the bot responds with "I'm sorry. Would you like me to transfer you to a human agent?" When the contact says yes, the bot initiates the transfer.	Actions are the options you have when defining how you want the bot to respond to each intent. They give you the flexibility to configure each response to achieve the outcome that meets the contact's needs.

Configure NLU Fallback

NLU fallback is triggered when a bot's confidence to properly understand the customer's intent is lower than the NLU confidence threshold Measures how confident a bot is that it correctly identified a message's intent. The default level is 70% (0.7), so fallback is triggered at any level below that.. You can choose basic or advanced fallback and design what the bot should do. Advanced fallback will ask the customer to confirm the intent. If the intent is confirmed, the conversation continues. If not, the bot moves on to the fallback message.

In CXone, click the app selector and select Bot Builder.
Click the bot you want to work with.
Click Dialogues in the left icon menu.
On the Fallback tab, click NLU.
Click the toggle to select either Basic or Advanced.
If you selected Basic fallback:
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1. To use a custom value for NLU confidence threshold, enter that value in the field.
2. Click the message to edit the default response.
3. If you want the bot to use the handover Any contact message that should trigger transfer to a live agent rule if it still doesn't understand, click the + icon and select Handover.
If you selected Advanced fallback:
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1. Under Step 1, if the toggle is turned on and the customer confirms the intent, the message is added to the intent. Click the message to edit the default response. You can also change the text and intents of the buttons.
2. Under Step 2, click the message to edit the default response.
3. If you want the bot to use the handover Any contact message that should trigger transfer to a live agent bot response action if it still doesn't understand, click the + icon and select Handover.
When you're finished making changes, click Train and Stage to update your bot model Version of a bot that has been trained and staged to test this change.

Configure Action Fallback

Action fallback is triggered when a bot's confidence to properly react to the message lower than the confidence threshold Measures how confident a bot is about the next action it should take. The default level is 40% (0.4), so fallback is triggered at any level below that.. It defines what the bot should do when it's not sure what action to take.

In CXone, click the app selector and select Bot Builder.
Click the bot you want to work with.
Click Dialogues in the left icon menu.
On the Fallback tab, click Action.
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To use a custom value for Action confidence threshold, enter that value in the field.
Click the message to edit the default response.
If you want the bot to use the handover Any contact message that should trigger transfer to a live agent rule if it still doesn't understand, click the + icon and select Handover.
When you're finished making changes, click Train and Stage to update your bot model Version of a bot that has been trained and staged to test this change.