Allowing your customers to change the topic of the conversation

In general, an action is designed to lead a customer through a particular process without any interruptions. However, real conversations almost never follow such a simple flow. In the middle of a conversation, customers might get distracted, ask questions about related issues, misunderstand something, or change their minds about what they want to do.

The Change conversation topic feature enables your assistant to handle these digressions, dynamically responding to the user by changing the conversation topic as needed.

How changing the topic works

This example shows a customer who changes the conversation topic while they are entering a credit card. When the assistant asks What is your CVV number?, the customer (who is new to credit cards) asks what a CVV is. The assistant is designed to handle this possibility, so it switches to a different action that answers the customer's question. It then continues where it left off.

Example: changing the conversation topic

The assistant determines when to change the conversation topic as follows:

When the assistant asks a question and receives a response, it first validates the response to see whether it answers the question. In the CVV example, the assistant expects a number as a response.
If the input is not recognized as an answer to the question, the assistant then evaluates the input to see whether it matches another action. (Changing the topic cannot switch the conversation to a different assistant.)

If the input does not answer the question, and it does not match any existing action of the assistant, a step validation error results. For more information about validation errors and how they are handled, see Handling errors in the conversation.
If the input matches a different action, the assistant switches to the matching action.

You can control how often your assistant switches topics. For more information, see Setting threshold.

In the example, the customer's response (What's a CVV number?) is not a valid response, but it does match another action that is designed to answer this question. The matching action is triggered, answering the customer's question.
After the second action completes, the assistant asks the customer if they want to return to the original action. If they say Yes, the assistant continues with the step where the customer changed the topic. In the example, the assistant returns to the original action and repeats the question What is your CVV number?.

If an action starts and doesn't finish its step set to End the action, then a customer can't digress into that action while it is still in progress. For example, if a customer starts an action, changes the topic to start another action, and then changes the topic again, any in-progress action isn't available for a topic switch.

Enabling and disabling changing the topic

By default, the Change conversation topic feature is enabled for all assistants and actions. (You need to enable the feature for steps that use a free text or regex response. For more information, see Enabling changing the topic for free text and regex customer responses.)

However, some processes are best completed without interruption, so you might want to disable this feature. You can disable for all actions, or just for an individual action.

To disable changing the topic for all actions:

From the Actions page of the assistant, click Global settings .
On the Change conversation topic tab, set the switch to Off.
Click Save, and then click Close.

To disable changing the topic for an individual action:

Edit an action, then click Action settings .
In the Action Settings window, toggle the Change conversation topic switch to Off.

Disabling returning to the original topic

Even when you allow changing the topic, you might not want a customer to return to the previous topic.

To disable returning to the original topic:

Edit an action, then click Action settings .
Keep the Change conversation topic toggle switched to On.
Select the checkbox Never return to original action after completing this action to prevent the customer from returning to the previous action.

Conditioning on previous topic

You can condition your new topic action, or steps within your new topic action, on the previous topic by using the built-in variable Digressed from. For example, if your previous topic action was Create new account and you digressed to an action with steps that only apply to existing accounts, use the expression in the following image in your step conditions to decide to run those steps.

Using Digressed from variable

For more information on creating conditions, see Adding conditions to an action and Adding conditions to a step.

Allow change of topic between actions and dialog

If you are using actions and dialog, you can ensure that customers can change topics between an action and a dialog node.

This setting is available if you activate dialog in Assistant settings. For more information, see Activating dialog and migrating skills.

Set the toggle Change topics from actions to dialog to On.
Click Save, and then click Close.

Enabling changing the topic for free text and regex customer responses

By default, changing the conversation topic works differently for free text and regex responses. Customers can't change topics when:

The assistant is asking for a free text response
An utterance matches the pattern in a regex response

If you want a customer to be able to digress and change topics when they enter a free text or regex answer:

Within the step, click the Settings icon for the customer response.
Enable the toggle Allow customer to change topics during a free text response or Allow customer to change topics before evaluating a regex response. For more information, see Free text or Regex.

Confirmation to return to previous topic

By default, new assistants are set to ask a "yes or no" question to confirm that the customers want to return to the previous action. You can modify these settings.

These settings aren't available when the assistant language is set to Another language, which uses the universal language model. For more information, see Adding support for global audiences.

To change the confirmation settings:

From the Actions page of the assistant, click Global settings .
On the Change conversation topic tab, click the Confirmation section.

Settings that you can change are:

Confirmation settings
Setting	Description
Ask a confirmation question	Change the toggle to Off to disable the confirmation question for all actions.
Assistant says	By default, the assistant asks `Do you want to return to your previous topic?` and uses the system variable `Digressed from` to include the name of the previous action. Use the editor to modify the confirmation question.
Validation message	By default, the assistant says `Please reply back with yes or no` if the customer doesn't answer `Yes` or `No`. Use the editor to modify the validation message.
Show confirmation buttons	The assistant includes clickable `Yes` and `No` buttons with the confirmation question. Click the toggle to Off to disable the `Yes` and `No` buttons.