Chatbot welcome message examples for six kinds of business

A website chatbot's opening message should do three jobs in one or two short sentences: say it is an AI assistant, say what it can help with, and say how to reach a person. Put a few tap-to-ask questions under it, and greet visitors in their own language. Examples for six kinds of business follow.

What should a chatbot welcome message say?

Four things, in this order.

• That it is an AI. In a 2018 study of chatbots with eight participants, Nielsen Norman Group found that people “were pleased when the business was transparent about using a bot because they could calibrate both their expectations and their language.” In some places it is also a legal point, which our post on chatbot disclosure laws covers.
• What it can help with. Name three or four real tasks. The same study's guidelines say: “Clearly tell people what tasks the bot can do. Make sure you don't create false expectations.”
• How to reach a person. One line is enough: a phrase to type, a button, a phone number or your opening hours. The study recommends an escape hatch “in the form of a real human, a phone number, or a link to a different interaction channel.” What happens after someone takes it is in our post on when a chatbot should hand off to a human.
• Nothing else. The W3C's accessibility tips for writers ask for “short, clear sentences and paragraphs”, and a chat window on a phone has room for very little. Keep the marketing on the website.

What to say instead of “How can I help you?”

Microsoft's guide to designing a bot's first interaction says: “Don't start your bot with an open-ended question, such as ‘How can I help you?’. If your bot has a hundred different things it can do, chances are users won't be able to guess most of them.” A bot with one job, it suggests, can open with a pointed question instead, so the visitor knows how to answer.

An open offer of help suits a person on live chat, and Nielsen Norman Group's guidelines for human chat agents suggest one in place of small talk. A person can take any question. A bot cannot, so its opening line is where it should say what it does take. Replace the open question with a short list of tasks, and buttons for the common ones.

Chatbot welcome message examples

Each example is short, says it is an AI and gives a way to a person. Swap the words in brackets for your own, and promise only what your chatbot really does.

Clinic or medical practice

“Hello, I'm the AI assistant for [Clinic]. I can help you book or change an appointment and answer questions about opening hours, fees and parking. I can't give medical advice. For anything urgent, call us on [number]. You can ask for our reception team at any time.”

Quick questions: Book an appointment, Opening hours, Which insurers do you accept?, Talk to reception. The medical advice line and the phone number belong in the greeting, before anyone starts describing symptoms. Our guide to AI chat for clinics covers where the bot should stop.

Web hosting company

“Hi, I'm the AI assistant for [Host]. I can help with domains, DNS, email setup, invoices and choosing a plan. Anything that changes your account goes to our support team, and you can ask for them at any time.”

Quick questions: Why is my site down?, Point my domain to you, Pay an invoice, Compare hosting plans. A client whose site is down wants that button before any other, so it goes at the top.

Online shop

“Hi, I'm [Shop]'s AI assistant. Ask me about sizes, delivery, returns or anything we sell. If something has gone wrong with an order, I'll bring in our team.”

Quick questions: How do I track my order?, Return an item, Delivery times and costs, Help me choose a size. Write Where is my order? only if the chatbot can look up orders for a signed-in customer. If it cannot, the button promises an answer it will not give.

Restaurant

“Hi, I'm the AI assistant for [Restaurant]. I can share our opening hours and the menu, and help you book a table. For allergies and dietary needs, please ask our staff by calling [number] or asking for a person here.”

Quick questions: Book a table, Do you have vegan dishes?, Opening hours today, See the menu. Sending allergy questions to staff is a choice worth making: the chatbot knows what your menu page says, and the kitchen knows what went into today's dishes.

Law firm

“Hello, I'm the AI assistant for [Firm]. I can tell you which areas of law we cover, what a first consultation costs and how to book one. I can't give legal advice about your situation, but our lawyers can. Ask for a person at any time.”

Quick questions: Book a consultation, Do you handle family law?, What does a first meeting cost?, Speak to someone. Keep the details of a case out of the chat. Ask for a name and a way to call back, and let a lawyer hear the rest.

Tour operator

“Hi, I'm the AI assistant for [Company]. I can check tour dates, explain what each trip includes and help you book. Our team answers anything I can't, [9:00 to 18:00, Monday to Saturday, local time].”

Quick questions: Tours this weekend, What's included?, Where is the pickup?, Private or group tour. A traveller may be writing from another time zone, so the team's hours, with the time zone, belong in the greeting. Our page on chatbots for tour operators has more.

Quick questions under the greeting

Quick questions are buttons under the welcome message that send a question with one tap. Microsoft's guide makes the case for them: by listing the options, “your bot is conveying its capabilities to the user”, and menus “spare the user from having to type too much”. Nielsen Norman Group adds that people should be able to use both free text and buttons, so the typing box stays.

• Use the words a customer would type, not the labels from your site menu.
• Put the question you are asked most at the top. Your inbox and phone calls tell you which it is.
• Three to six is plenty. More turns the greeting into a menu nobody reads.
• Test every button. Each one should lead to a good answer, every time.
• Make one of them the way to a person, if the greeting does not already say how.

Greet visitors in their own language

A chatbot can reply in the language a visitor writes in, but the greeting appears before they have typed a word. So the chat window has to work it out from something else, such as the language your page declares or the visitor's browser setting, and it can only show a greeting someone has written in that language. If yours exists only in English, an Arabic or French reader starts in English.

Write each version yourself, or have a native speaker check a machine translation, and keep the same promises in each language. A notice that the chat is an AI only works in a language the reader understands. For Arabic, check that the greeting and its buttons read right to left. A multilingual chatbot writes its answers in the visitor's language, but the greeting is text you write.

Mistakes to avoid in a chatbot greeting

• Promises the bot cannot keep. “I can answer anything”, or “I can check your order” on a chatbot with no link to your orders.
• A form before any help. Asking for a name and email before the bot has answered anything makes people work before they know the chat is useful. Ask when there is a reason, such as passing the chat to your team.
• A paragraph. If the greeting needs scrolling on a phone, cut it.
• Out-of-date details. Hours, prices and holiday closures in a greeting go stale. Check them whenever they change on your website.

Setting the welcome message in MagizAI

In MagizAI, each chatbot has a welcome message and up to six quick questions, shown as buttons under it. You can also write a separate greeting and set of questions for English, French and Arabic visitors. The chat window works out the visitor's language from your page, or from the browser when the page does not say, and a language with no text of its own gets your main greeting and questions. By default the chat header also shows “AI assistant” under your chatbot's name, in the visitor's language. The greeting is saved as the opening line of each conversation, so when it asks a question, the AI knows what the visitor is answering. The training guide covers what your chatbot should know before you write its greeting.