Choosing Training Sources

Your AI chatbot has four types of training sources. Each works best for different kinds of content. Using the right one helps your chatbot find and deliver accurate answers.

How to get there: Go to Setup → Chatbot in the top menu → click your chatbot → see the Training section tabs in the sidebar.

Source Types at a Glance

Source Best for Example
Q&A Specific questions with specific answers "What is your address?" → "123 Main St, Suite 100"
Text Snippets Structured reference content, policies, guidelines Service area details, return policy, operating procedures
Exact Answers Correcting a wrong chatbot response Override a specific bad answer with the correct one
Files Large documents, spreadsheets, bulk data Resource directories, product catalogs, PDF reports

Q&A (FAQ)

Use Q&A for core business facts that visitors commonly ask about:

  • Address and location
  • Phone numbers and contact info
  • Opening hours
  • Service area
  • Pricing

Why Q&A works best for these: Each Q&A entry becomes a single, focused chunk in the knowledge base. When someone asks "what is your address?", the chatbot finds your Q&A entry with the address much more reliably than if the address is buried in a large document.

Tips:

  • Keep each Q&A focused on one topic
  • Write the question as your visitors would ask it
  • Include all relevant details in the answer

Text Snippets

Use text snippets for structured reference content that doesn't fit a simple question-and-answer format:

  • Detailed policies or procedures
  • Topic guides for the chatbot to reference
  • Background information about your organization
  • Instructions on how the chatbot should handle specific situations

Tips:

  • You can use sections with XML-style tags (e.g. <service_area>...</service_area>) to organize content — the system keeps each section together
  • Include context and instructions, not just bare facts (see "Writing Effective Content" below)

Exact Answers (Revised Answers)

Use exact answers to correct a specific wrong response from your chatbot:

  1. Find a conversation where the chatbot gave a wrong answer
  2. Click the answer and select Revise
  3. Write the correct response

The chatbot will use your revised answer whenever someone asks a similar question. Exact answers take the highest priority and bypass the normal knowledge search.

Tips:

  • Use these sparingly for specific corrections, not as a general training method
  • If you find yourself creating many exact answers on the same topic, consider adding a Q&A or text snippet instead

Files

Use files for large reference documents and bulk data:

  • Resource directories and partner lists (spreadsheets)
  • Product catalogs
  • PDF reports or guides
  • Long-form documentation

The system automatically splits files into searchable chunks. This is the easiest way to add large amounts of content.

Tips:

  • Spreadsheets work well for structured data (e.g. a directory of local organizations with names, phone numbers, and descriptions)
  • Very large files get split into many chunks — make sure each row or section is self-contained

What Not to Train On

Some pages on your website are great for SEO but harm your sales chatbot. The bot will faithfully cite whatever you give it, so anything that mentions competitors or describes your product's weaknesses gets repeated back to a prospect at the worst moment.

Rule of thumb

  • Include: features pages, pricing, docs, FAQs, KB articles, customer-facing changelog, product tours
  • Exclude: competitor comparisons, "X vs Y" posts, "best of" listicles, "alternatives to X" pages, anything with the word "however" near a competitor name
  • Borderline: your own blog posts. Fine if they're educational (e.g. "how to write a changelog"), risky if they're positioning (e.g. "when not to use our product")

Easy heuristic: if the URL or H1 contains another company's name, exclude it.

Why this matters

A real example. A comparison blog post titled "10 Best Changelog Tools" had a section called "Where Our Product Falls Short" with the line "Basic analytics, view counts, but not as detailed as Competitor X." When a prospect asked about analytics, the chatbot quoted that line back, including the competitor name. The blog post ranks well in Google, which is exactly what it should do, but it has no business being in the chatbot's training data.

The same applies to your own marketing copy. If a features page claims something the product doesn't do yet, the chatbot will repeat the claim. Audit your training pages for accuracy before letting the bot ground answers on them.

How to exclude a page

Go to Setup → Chatbot in the top menu, click your chatbot, open the Training section, find the Website Pages tab, and remove (or untick) the comparison pages. The pages stay live on your site for SEO, they just stop being a training source.

Writing Effective Content

The most common mistake is providing bare facts without context. Your chatbot needs to know not just what the facts are, but how to use them.

Bad example

Stamford, Norwalk, Darien, Greenwich, New Canaan, Weston, Westport, Wilton

This is just a list of towns. The chatbot doesn't know what these towns mean — is this where you deliver? Where your offices are? Where your customers live?

Good example

The Rowan Center ONLY serves these 8 towns in Lower Fairfield County: Stamford, Norwalk, Darien, Greenwich, New Canaan, Weston, Westport, and Wilton. If someone is from outside this area, let them know we cannot directly serve them but help them find local resources.

This tells the chatbot:

  1. What the list means (service area)
  2. That it's exclusive (ONLY these towns)
  3. What to do when someone is outside the area

More examples

Instead of:

Mon-Fri 9-5

Write:

Our office is open Monday through Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM. Our 24/7 helpline is available outside office hours. If someone contacts us outside office hours, direct them to the helpline.

Instead of:

$49/month, $99/month, $199/month

Write:

We offer three plans: Starter at $49/month, Professional at $99/month, and Enterprise at $199/month. If someone asks about pricing, share all three options and suggest they visit our pricing page for full details.

Priority Order

When the chatbot searches for answers, sources are prioritized:

  1. Exact Answers — highest priority, used when a close match exists
  2. Q&A — focused, single-topic entries that rank well in search
  3. Text Snippets — structured content, good for detailed topics
  4. Website Pages & Files — broadest content, used when more specific sources don't match