How to Automate Your FAQ With an AI Chatbot
A FAQ page is a good start, but visitors rarely read it. They ask a question in their own words, and if they cannot find the answer in a few seconds they email you. Automating your FAQ means putting a chat on top of the pages you already have, so the visitor types the question and gets the matching answer in plain words, with a link back to the page. You keep your FAQ as it is. Here is how to do it in five steps.
Step 1: List the questions your FAQ already answers
Open your FAQ and help pages and list every question on them. Then add the questions you answer by email that are not on the page yet. This is your checklist for testing later. Note which answers must never vary, such as prices, refund rules, legal terms and opening hours. Those get special treatment in step 3.
Step 2: Add your FAQ and help pages as a source
Create your chat and add the address of your FAQ, or of your whole site. OneType reads the pages as a visitor would see them, including answers hidden in accordions and tabs, so you do not have to rewrite or reformat anything. You can add a sitemap to take in every help page at once, and you can add documents or pasted text for answers that are not on the site. Pages behind a login cannot be read. When the reading is done, ask the chat the questions from step 1 in the test chat.
Step 3: Add saved answers for exact wording
For the answers that must be worded the same way every time, write a saved answer. On the Knowledge page, add a question the way a visitor would ask it, add up to five other ways people phrase it, and write the answer. Then choose how the chat uses it. "Use as guidance" is the default: the chat rephrases your answer to fit the conversation. "Reply with this answer exactly" sends your words as written, so choose it for prices, policies and anything legal. A saved answer is searchable at once, with no waiting for a sync. If you spot a weak reply in a conversation later, you can fix it from there: the question and the reply are already filled in.
Step 4: Choose how the chat looks on your site
Pick one of the chat templates, add your logo, and set the name visitors see, the greeting and a few starter questions. Good starter questions are the top questions from step 1, so visitors can reach the common answers in one click. Then add the chat to your site by pasting one script tag before the closing body tag, the same line for any site. The chat button appears in the corner of your published site, and you manage everything else from your dashboard.
Step 5: Keep answers current when pages change
A FAQ that was right in January can be wrong by June. OneType reads your sources again on a schedule set by your plan and updates only what changed. On the Free plan there is no schedule: you press Sync now on a source, once a day. If your site blocks a re-read for a moment, the last good version stays live, so a bad day on your server does not empty the chat. Each source on the Knowledge page shows when it was last synced. Once a week, look at the questions the chat could not answer, grouped by meaning with the most asked first, and add each missing answer once.
Put your FAQ to work
See how a chat can answer from your help pages: AI chat for your help center, or start free.