Build an Mpower Agent Tutorial

This page is a tutorial that follows Akela Wolfe, a CXone Mpower Agent Builder administrator for Classics, Inc, as she builds a new Mpower AgentClosed A virtual agent created with CXone Mpower Agent Builder that can handle voice or chat interactions.. The goal of this tutorial is to help you:

Before going through this tutorial, read the help page about getting started with Agent Builder. It introduces essential Conversational AI concepts and relates them to Mpower Agent configurations.

You can follow along with Akela if you want. The steps necessary to do each of the tasks are included in drop-downs in each section below.

Tutorial Scope

This tutorial does not result in a full working Mpower Agent. It guides you through the process of building and managing a single use case. Many Mpower Agents will handle more than one use case.

This tutorial only covers the steps that happen directly related to the Mpower Agent. It does not cover the steps required to set up and configure a digital or voice channelClosed Various voice and digital communication mediums that facilitate customer interactions in a contact center. in CXone Mpower. The Mpower Agent requires at least one channel to work in a production environment. When you're ready to create your own Mpower Agent, follow the implementation process, which covers all steps required to set up and manage your Mpower Agent.

Preparation

Akela has been given the task of creating a new Mpower Agent. Her manager wants the Mpower Agent to answer basic customer service questions, such as how to change passwords, update account details, and so on. Working with her manager, she identifies the following use cases as the starting place for the Mpower Agent

  • Change password
  • Change address
  • Change phone number
  • Change billing credit card

Akela decides that the first use case she will work on is changing passwords. She talks to the help desk agents in her organization and reviews interactionClosed The full conversation with an agent through a channel. For example, an interaction can be a voice call, email, chat, or social media conversation. recordings and transcripts. Using this input, she builds a file of typical password reset interactions.

She has worked in Agent Builder before, so Akela knows that her CXone Mpower employee profile has the permission the required to access Agent Builder( Agent Builder > Launch Agent Builder).

Create a New Mpower Agent

Akela logs in to CXone Mpower and creates a new employee profile for her Mpower Agent. This is required because CXone Mpower treats Mpower Agents as user entities. All user entities must have employee profiles in the platform.

After creating an employee profile for the Mpower Agent, Akela creates a new Mpower Agent in Agent Builder. She gives it the same name that she used in the employee profile, John Mpower Agent.

Create Intents

After reviewing the real-life interactions she gathered, Akela puts together an example of a typical successful password reset request. This is known as the happy path for this intent. This is her example:

ContactClosed The person interacting with an agent, IVR, or bot in your contact center.: Hello.

Mpower Agent: Hi, how can I help?

Contact: I forgot my password.

Mpower Agent: I'm sorry to hear that. You can reset it at our website.

Contact: How do I do that?

Mpower Agent: Click Forgot Password in the upper right corner of the landing page. Then enter your email address and the system will send you a link to reset your password.

Contact: Thank you!

Mpower Agent: You're welcome. Is there anything else I can do for you?

Contact: No. You've been very helpful. Goodbye.

Mpower Agent: Thank you for contacting us. Goodbye.

Akela determines there are five intents in the happy path:

  • Greeting (Hello)
  • Reset_password (I forgot my password)
  • Explain (How do I do that?)
  • Thanks (Thank you and You've been very helpful)
  • Goodbye (Goodbye)

Akela creates these intents:

  1. In Agent Builder, Akela goes to the Intents tab in the NLU section.
  2. She creates a folder called Conversation_defaults.
  3. In it, she creates an intent called greetings.
  4. Akela goes through the interaction examples she gathered and adds all the different greetings contacts used as examples for the greetings intent. She adds hello, hi, howdy, yo, and so on.
  5. Then she adds two more intents, thanks and goodbyes. She adds examples for each of them, including thank you, thanks very much, and thank you so much for the thanks intent. For the goodbyes intent, she adds bye, so long, and ok goodbye.
  6. Next, Akela creates a folder called password_reset.
  7. She adds intents called Reset_password and explain, then adds examples for each one from her interaction examples:
    • For Reset_password she adds examples such as I need to change my password, my password is wrong, my password needs updated, and how do I change my password.
    • For explain, she adds examples such as how do I do that, I don't see that option, and where is it.
  8. Akela continues adding examples to her intents as she finds them in her interaction examples. All the intents have a medium number of examples. She knows that more examples help her Mpower Agent will learn. However, she also knows that making up examples isn't recommended. She doesn't have more to add right now, but can add more as she works.

Create Rules

Akela decides that rules are the right way to teach her Mpower Agent some of the intents she created. Rules teach an Mpower Agent to give the same response to an intent every time the intent is recognized. This is ideal for things such as greetings, goodbyes, and thank-yous. These are the intents she wants to use rules for.

This is what Akela does:

  1. She creates a folder on the Rules tab in the Dialogues section of Agent Builder called Conversation_defaults.
  2. In the new folder, Akela adds a rule called Greeting.
  3. Akela uses Hello as the example contact message A square with rounded corners with a face in it. to trigger the Greetings rule. When she presses Enter, her Mpower Agent correctly predicts the greetings intent, so she confirms the result.
  4. Next, Akela adds the Mpower Agent response A square with rounded corners and a robot head inside.. She wants the Mpower Agent to respond with its own greeting, so she adds a Message action and enters Hi, how can I help today? as the message she wants her Mpower Agent to send to the contact.
  5. Finally, she decides that if contacts use her Mpower Agent often they might notice that it always responds the same. To make the experience more like talking to a human, Akela adds some variations icon, represented by two crossing arrows to the response. The Mpower Agent will randomly use one of the message variations. In addition to the first message, her Mpower Agent can now say Hi and thanks for contacting us. What can I do for you? and Hello, what can I assist you with today?.
  6. Akela repeats this process and creates a Goodbyes rule. She uses Bye as the triggering contact message A square with rounded corners with a face in it..
  7. The Mpower Agent correctly predicts the goodbye intent, so Akela confirms the result.
  8. Next, she adds the bot's responses. She adds Goodbye! as a Message action with Have a nice day., and Have a great rest of your day! as the variations icon, represented by two crossing arrows.
  9. The last rule Akela adds is Thanks. For this rule, she uses Thank you as the triggering contact message A square with rounded corners with a face in it.. The Mpower Agent predicts the correct intent and Akela confirms the result.
  10. Then she adds Mpower Agent responses. She adds You're welcome! as a Message action with I'm happy to help., and Of course, I'm here to help. as the variations icon, represented by two crossing arrows.

Create Stories

Akela is going to create stories for the two remaining intents , Reset_password and Explain. She refers to her planned happy path story for a forgotten password. After thinking about it, she decides to combine the Explain intent with the Reset_password intent. This will shorten the conversation and improve customer experience.

In Agent Builder, creates her story:

  1. First, she hides An eye with a diagonal line crossing it out. the Explain intent on the NLU > Intent tab. This will exclude it from the Mpower Agent when she clicks Train and Stage. She wants to keep it for now, but doesn't want to add the intent examples to the Reset_password intent. She hopes that providing the information as a response to requests about passwords will mean no one asks "how do I do that" questions.
  2. On the Stories tab in the Dialogues section, Akela creates a folder called Password.
  3. In the new folder, she creates a Reset_password story.
  4. She starts the story with a contact message of I need to change my password. Her Mpower Agent correctly predicts the Resent_password intent, so she clicks Confirm.
  5. She adds an Mpower Agent response with two parts: 
    • First is a Message action with the text I'm sorry to hear that. I can help! You can do that on our website:
    • Second is a Rich Link action, to which she adds a link to the Jungle website page about resetting passwords: www.jungle.com/passwordreset. She includes an image of the Jungle logo, which will appear in the message with the link.

The story Akela creates includes only the part of the conversation that is relevant to the context of the Reset_password intent. This is important to note, because adding more content to a story than is relevant to its intent can confuse the Mpower Agent. If you add content to the story related to another request, such as updating a mailing address, the Mpower Agent will think that changing mailing addresses can only happen within the context of a password reset request, even if you create an intent for changing mailing addresses.

Train and Test the Mpower Agent

After creating each the intents, rules, and stories for her first use case, Akela clicked Train and Stage. This creates a new Mpower Agent model that includes these configurations. However, this is only the first step in training. After she finishes adding the rules and story for the password reset use case, Akela needs to test the ability of her Mpower Agent to predict and respond to the intents in the use case.

To do this, she starts training and testing in Agent Builder:

  1. The first thing Akela does is click Train and Stage to ensure that her Mpower Agent is up to date with all the changes she's made.
  2. While the training is in progress, Akela finds her real-world conversation examples for the password reset use case.
  3. She clicks the speech bubble icon, represented by a conversation bubble next to Train and Stage.
  4. Akela chooses one of the conversation examples and plays the role of the contact. She follows the example like a script and starts the conversation with Hello.
  5. The Mpower Agent performs flawlessly. Akela clicks Reset in the chat window and starts the next conversation example.
  6. This conversation doesn't go so well. The Mpower Agent correctly predicts the Reset_password intent, but after it responded with the rich link action, the contact replied Oh that's easy. Not sure why I didn't see that.
  7. Akela makes a note of the unrecognized message so she can address it later.
  8. She continues testing. She finds that two other contacts responded with unexpected messages after the Mpower Agent sends the URL message: 
    • One said DUH haha! That was obvious! and the other said How'd I miss that before? Thanks.
    • The second response includes the word thanks, so the Mpower Agent predicted the Thanks intent. However, Akela knows that without that, the Mpower Agent would probably have failed to respond appropriately.
  9. When testing a different conversation example, the Mpower Agent doesn't predict the right intent for I'm locked out of my account. Akela adds this example to the Reset_password intent.
  10. She resets the chat window and repeats the example conversation. This time, the Mpower Agent correctly predicts the intent.
  11. Akela notices that although I'm locked out of my account triggered the Reset_password intent, the response of I'm sorry to hear that! You can do that on our website. isn't an appropriate response.
  12. Akela now has two tasks to do to refine the responses her Mpower Agent gives to this intent:
    • Create fallback for any unexpected message.
    • Create an intent for contacts' expressions of relief that the solution was easy.

Create Fallback

Through her testing, Akela discovered that if the contact said something unexpected, the Mpower Agent didn't know how to respond. She decides to create fallback to address the situation. There are three kinds of fallback: action, NLU, and rich messaging. Akela determines that for the current case, NLU fallback is the kind she needs. This is because NLU fallback is for situations where the contact says something unexpected.

  1. On the Dialogues > Fallback tab, she clicks NLU in the list on the left side of the page.
  2. She looks at the Basic and Advanced options and chooses Advanced.
  3. On the Advanced page, she decides not to change the default Mpower Agent message for step 1.
  4. For step 2, Akela adds a Message action followed by a Handover action, as shown in the following image.

Refine Intents, Rules, and Stories

Akela works on the other issue found during testing, fixing contacts' expressions of relief that the solution was easy:

  1. Akela goes to the NLU > Intents tab and creates a relief intent in the Conversation_defaults folder. The intent she's making is generic and not specifically related to any situation. This means anytime a contact expresses relief, the Mpower Agent can respond.
  2. She adds the examples she found already, including well DUH that was obvious, how'd I miss that, and oh that's easy.
  3. Next, she creates a story using one of her examples as the contact message. She has the Mpower Agent respond with a Message action that says I'm glad to I could help! Is there anything else I can do for you?

Repeat Testing

After fixing the issues she found during her initial testing, Akela repeats the testing. When she doesn't find any additional issues, she adds more intents, stories, and rules for the other use cases she planned. When all the use cases have been added and tested, she decides to deploy her Mpower Agent to production.

Review Conversation Data

After her Mpower Agent has been live for a few days, Akela reviews the conversation data on the Insights > Conversation tab in Agent Builder. It soon becomes clear that many users combine thanks and goodbye in the same message. She decides that the conversation will have a better flow if she creates a multi-intent so the Mpower Agent can respond to these intents together. A multi-intent covers situations when the contact has two intents in a single message. She starts to work:

  1. In the Conversation_defaults folder, she creates an intent called thanks + goodbye. The plus sign ( + ) makes this a multi-intent.
  2. Aklea adds examples for these intents, taken from the example interactions she gathered. She adds examples such as That works. Bye, Thanks talk to you later, I appreciate your help, goodbye, and thanks, see ya.
  3. Next, she creates a rule that uses the thanks + goodbye intent. The Mpower Agent response is a Message action that says You're welcome. Have a great day.