Optimizing Chatbase Chatbot Responses

While Chatbase's AI-powered chatbots offer immense value in automating customer interactions, it's important to understand that they operate within the inherent limitations of current AI technology. Occasionally, chatbots may produce responses that are inaccurate or outside of the scope of the provided documents. These deviances are referred to as "hallucinations" in AI.

With Chatbase, you have multiple ways to mitigate this issue and fine-tune your chatbot's responses. Here's how you can optimize the responses of your chatbot.

Refine the Chatbot's Instructions

The instructions shapes your chatbot's behavior and responses. To ensure your bot only answers questions about the given document, specify this in the instructions. For instance, you can state, "You will only provide answers based on the information in [document name]." The default is the following:

I want you to act as a support agent. Your name is "AI Assistant". You will provide me with answers from the given info. If the answer is not included, say exactly "Hmm, I am not sure." and stop after that. Refuse to answer any question not about the info. Never break character.

You can find more information about the instructions in the previous article, Getting Started With Your Chatbot Settings

Ensure Readability of Uploaded Data Sources

The quality of your chatbot's responses largely depends on the quality of the data sources you provide. Chatbase uses readable text to generate responses, so ensure that the websites or PDFs you upload contain readable text. Note that Chatbase can't process images, videos, or non-textual elements in documents. Some websites are not scraper friendly, so if you see your chatbot is unable to answer questions on your website, this might be the case. You can work-around this by copy and pasting information as text into the data sources, or uploading it as a PDF instead.

Utilize the "Revise" Feature and Q&A Data Type

The "revise" feature is accessible from the dashboard in your conversation history. It is a tool for tweaking responses.

{% image className="border rounded-md border-zinc-900/10" src="https://backend.chatbase.co/storage/v1/object/public/chatbase/guides/revise.png" width="900" height="900" alt="Page Mapping Example" /%}

If you're not satisfied with how your chatbot answered a particular query, you can use this feature to alter the response to fix it for the future. Additionally, using the Q&A data type can help your chatbot generate better answers by referring to pre-set questions and answers. The responses you revise will appear in the Q&A tab under "Manage Sources."

{% image className="border rounded-md border-zinc-900/10" src="https://backend.chatbase.co/storage/v1/object/public/chatbase/guides/q_a.png" width="900" height="900" alt="Manage Sources - Q&A" /%}

Leverage the Power of GPT-4

If you want your chatbot to generate more nuanced and sophisticated responses, consider using the GPT-4 model. While it costs more in terms of message credits, it produces more accurate and contextually aware responses. You can change what language model you use.

{% image className="border rounded-md border-zinc-900/10" src="https://backend.chatbase.co/storage/v1/object/public/chatbase/guides/gpt-model.png" width="900" height="900" alt="gpt model setting" /%}

Create a Document Mapping Website URLs to Page Names

If you notice your bot produces fake URLs that lead to 404 errors, try to make a PDF document that maps all of the correct URLs with the page names. This can be very helpful if your chatbot operates on a website with multiple pages. Having a document that maps URLs to page names can help your chatbot better understand user queries related to different pages. Here is an example of a mapping inputted as text in the data sources:

{% image className="border rounded-md border-zinc-900/10" src="https://backend.chatbase.co/storage/v1/object/public/chatbase/guides/mappings.png" width="900" height="900" alt="Page Mapping Example" /%}

Additionally, you can add these links in Q&A format, and follow the suggestions previously mentioned.

Next Steps

By implementing these strategies, you can significantly enhance your Chatbase chatbot's ability to provide useful responses, leading to more successful interactions.