Troubleshooting
Why your agent says it does not know, and how to fix it
Your agent only answers with what is in its knowledge. If it says it does not have that information, here is how to find the gap and close it.
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Your agent answers with what is in its knowledge and, when it cannot find the fact, it says so instead of making one up. The fix is almost always the same: see what it finds for that question and add what is missing as an FAQ.
See what it finds for that question
This is the quickest check and it uses no credits.
Go to Knowledge and choose the agent. It is the same screen as the agent’s Knowledge tab.
Go to the Test a question section.
Type the question the way your customer asked it and press Search.
Read the result:
- Passages with High or Medium relevance appear and they contain the answer: the knowledge is fine. Go to the fact is there, but the agent does not use it.
- Only passages with Low relevance appear, or the notice “No passage is clearly relevant”: the fact is not there, or it is worded very differently from the way your customers ask.
- “Nothing answers this question” appears: the agent has nothing on that subject.
In the last two cases, the fix is in the next section.
The fact is not in the knowledge
This is the most common cause. What is obvious to you (whether there is parking, whether dogs are welcome, how long delivery takes) is often not written down anywhere.
Under Test a question, press Add it as an FAQ. If you do not see the button, press Add source and choose FAQ.
Write the question the way a customer would ask it and the answer the agent should give, in full sentences with concrete facts.
Press Add source. When its status changes to Ready, test the question again.
An FAQ entry is stored whole as a single passage, so it is the surest way to get an exact answer from the agent. For longer information (a returns policy, a menu), use Text or upload the document: see add knowledge.
The source exists, but it is not ready
Look at the Status column of the Sources list. A new source is not used until it is Ready.
| Status | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Queued or Indexing | It is being processed. It usually takes a few seconds; a site with many pages, a little longer | Wait. Meanwhile the agent answers with what it already had |
| Failed | It could not be read. Open the source to see why | Fix what it says and press Re-index. The reasons are listed in accepted files and knowledge limits |
| Waiting | The source is saved, but the AI service is not available right now | There is nothing for you to do: it is indexed automatically as soon as the service is back. If it stays like this, write to us from Support |
The website or the document cannot be read properly
A source can be Ready and still not contain what you think it does. Open the source with View details and look at Content read: that is the text that was read from it. For a long page or document only the beginning is shown.
- Pages built with JavaScript. If a page only shows its content after loading, there is no text to read and the source fails with “No readable text was found on the page”. Copy the content and add it as Text.
- Scanned documents. A PDF made of photos of pages has no selectable text and is not supported. Use the original document or type the content.
- Facts inside images. A menu in a photo, a poster with your opening hours or a table pasted as a picture are not read. Type them in as Text or Business info.
- Pages the crawl did not reach. If you added your site with Crawl the site, the source shows how many pages it found and what the limit was. Add the ones left out one by one with This page only.
The information is there, but worded differently
The agent searches by meaning, not by exact words, but the closer your text is to the question, the better it finds it. If your website says “Right of withdrawal” and your customers ask “can I send it back?”, add an FAQ in their words.
Under Analytics, the section Questions your agent could not answer collects the latest questions it answered with low confidence. Go through it now and then and press Add to its knowledge on the ones that keep coming up.
The fact is there, but the agent does not use it
If Test a question finds the right passage and the agent still does not answer with it, check the following:
- The knowledge belongs to another agent. Each agent has its own. Make sure you are looking at the agent that serves that channel.
- An instruction prevents it. Under Agents › your agent › Behaviour › Instructions, a rule such as “do not talk about prices” is obeyed even if the price is in the knowledge.
- The information contradicts itself. If two sources say different things (old opening hours in a PDF and the new ones on the website), the agent may go with either. Delete or correct the old one: see keep knowledge up to date.
What to send to support if nothing changes
Open a ticket from Support with the agent’s name, the exact question, what it answered and what you expected. If a customer asked the question, add the channel and the approximate time so that we can find the conversation.
Related articles
- Add knowledge: your website, documents, texts and FAQsHow to add each kind of source to your agent (website, documents, FAQs, text and business info), which one to choose and what happens afterwards.
- Test your agent and read the diagnostics of each replyWrite to it as a customer would in the Playground tab and see in Diagnostics which sources it uses, how confident it is, what it is missing and what each reply costs.
- Keep knowledge up to dateWhat to do when a price, your opening hours or your website changes: edit a source, re-index it, replace a document, delete it and check the result.
- Accepted files and knowledge limitsWhich formats you can upload, what cannot be read, the limits on size, pages and sources, and what each error message on a source means.