Visitors often have questions around the clock, but human agents cannot be available 24/7. Intelligent Customer Service uses large language models and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) technology to automatically answer visitor questions based on your website content and a custom knowledge base. You can configure the appearance of the customer service component, manage a multi-source knowledge base, and continuously improve the resolution rate through Question Tuning.
Prerequisites
Before you use Intelligent Customer Service, complete the following preparations:
Ensure you have embedded the website code. If you have not, get the code from the Deployment & Preview page and embed it.
The Activate Feature switch on the Deployment & Preview page is enabled.
For more information, see Quick Start.
Access intelligent customer service
Log on to the Alibaba Cloud Domains console.
In the left-side navigation pane, select Website AI Suite.
In the website list, find the website you want to manage and click Manage Website on its card to open the website instance console.
In the left-side navigation pane, expand the Intelligent Customer Service menu to see the Customer Service Configuration, knowledge base, and Analytics & Optimization subpages.
Configure the appearance
In the Intelligent Customer Service menu, click Customer Service Configuration to go to the configuration page. The left side of the page lists configuration items, while the right side provides a real-time preview.
Parameter | Description | Default |
Customer service icon | Upload a custom image to use as the customer service component's icon. The file size cannot exceed 2 MB. | The system automatically uses your website's logo. If the logo cannot be retrieved, a default robot icon is used. |
Color selection | Set the theme color for the customer service component. You can select a preset color or a custom color. | The system automatically recommends a color based on your website's primary color scheme. |
Customer service name | The name displayed on the customer service component. Maximum length: 25 characters. | Intelligent Customer Service |
Customer service introduction | The descriptive text that appears below the customer service name. Maximum length: 25 characters. | Available 24/7 to answer your questions |
Opening questions | Recommended questions that are displayed when a visitor opens the customer service component. You can configure up to three questions. | The system automatically generates three recommended questions based on your website content. |
Bubble prompt | A bubble that guides visitors to open the customer service component. You can customize the prompt text (up to 100 characters) and the trigger time (in seconds). After a visitor closes the bubble, it does not appear again. | Text: Feel free to ask a question or leave your contact information; Trigger time: 5 seconds. |
Human agent contact information | The contact information for human agents. The system displays this information when Intelligent Customer Service cannot meet a visitor's needs. | None. |
After completing the configuration, click Publish to Production to apply your settings.
The preview area on the right is for testing purposes only and does not affect the production environment. New configurations take effect only after you click Publish to Production.
Manage the knowledge base
The knowledge base is the information source that Intelligent Customer Service uses to answer questions. The richer the knowledge sources, the higher the accuracy and coverage of the answers.
In the Intelligent Customer Service menu, click knowledge base to go to the management page.
Link website data
When you add a website, the system automatically crawls its content to create a baseline knowledge source for the customer service. This page displays basic information about the linked website and when the data was last updated.
You can perform the following operations:
Click Refresh Data to manually trigger a re-crawl of your website content.
Enable the Auto-refresh switch to have the system automatically update the website data every 30 days.
Upload files
Upload corporate documents, such as product manuals, service procedures, and FAQs, as supplemental knowledge sources. Supported formats include PDF, DOC, DOCX, TXT, Markdown, and Excel.
After uploading, the system automatically parses the file content. You can delete a file only after the parsing process completes or fails.
A single file cannot exceed the system's size limit.
If you upload a file in an unsupported format, the system reports a format error. Convert the file to a supported format and try again.
If a file fails to parse, check for formatting issues or garbled characters in the file content, fix them, and then re-upload.
If you delete a file, the service can no longer reference its content.
Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) consist of Q&A pairs. When answering questions, Intelligent Customer Service prioritizes content from the FAQ.
You can perform the following operations:
Add Question: Manually enter a question and its standard answer.
AI Generate: The system automatically generates recommended Q&A pairs based on your website content and the existing knowledge base.
Edit and delete: Modify or delete existing FAQ entries.
Analytics and optimization
In the Intelligent Customer Service menu, click Analytics & Optimization.
Service data
The service data dashboard displays core operational metrics for a specified time range.
Metric | Description |
Number of conversations | The total number of chat sessions between visitors and Intelligent Customer Service. |
Number of users | The number of unique visitors who have sent at least one message. |
Total questions resolved | The total number of questions with a "Resolved" status. |
Resolution rate | (Number of resolved questions - Number of downvoted questions) / Total number of questions × 100%. This metric helps measure service satisfaction. |
The service data also provides question category statistics, which classify questions by user intent into categories such as product inquiries, basic information inquiries, pre-sales and after-sales inquiries, and others.
The table below displays detailed conversation data, including conversation summaries, question categories, resolution statuses, conversation times, and conversation rounds. Click Details to view specific conversation logs.
Question tuning
This section displays unresolved and partially resolved questions from a specified time range, helping you improve Q&A quality by adding these items to the FAQ.
Procedure:
Select a time range to view the list of unresolved questions.
Click Add Question next to a question to write a standard answer for it.
After the FAQ entry is added, the corresponding question is removed from the list. When visitors ask the same or similar questions in the future, the service prioritizes the answer from the FAQ.
Improve Q&A quality
To improve answer quality, follow these practices:
Add multi-source knowledge: In addition to linked website data, upload documents such as product manuals and service procedures, and maintain a high-quality FAQ to cover common visitor questions from multiple angles.
Keep data current: If your website content is updated frequently, enable Auto-refresh to ensure the information used by the service is consistent with your live website.
Tune questions regularly: Periodically review the Question Tuning page and add FAQs for unanswered questions to improve the resolution rate.
Set opening questions: Configure business-relevant opening questions to guide visitors to the information they need quickly.
Configure a human agent fallback: Provide human agent contact information to offer a fallback channel for complex issues.
Billing
The product is currently in a free trial period, allowing you to use the Intelligent Customer Service feature at no cost. After the trial period, billing will be based on your usage of Inspiration Value (measured in tokens).