Your chatbot's welcome message and languages
Write your chatbot's welcome message, translate it, and choose between a fixed language or a multilingual chatbot that follows each visitor.
The welcome message is the first sentence your visitors read when they open the chatbot. Well written, it makes them want to ask a question. This guide also explains how to make your chatbot multilingual, or limit it to a single language.
Where to find these settings
When creating the chatbot: in step 1 of the wizard, Essentials.
Afterwards, at any time:
- Open My Chatbots and click Edit on your chatbot.
- Open the AI Model tab.
- Edit the First Message (Greeting) and the Language.
- Click Save Changes.
Write a good welcome message
The First Message (Greeting) field holds the sentence shown when the chat window opens.
A few tips:
- Introduce yourself: "Hello, I'm the Solar Plus assistant."
- Say what you can do: "I can answer your questions about our installations and help you get a quote."
- End with a simple question: "What is your project?"
- Keep it short: two or three sentences are enough.
Add quick replies: they appear under the welcome message and give visitors ready-made questions to click.
Translate the welcome message
Under the field, click Welcome message in other languages to show four fields: French, English, Spanish and Hebrew.
These fields are optional. Visitors see the message in their language when it is filled in; otherwise the main message is shown.
Choose the chatbot's language
The Language setting offers: Auto Detect, English, Spanish, Hebrew and French.
Auto Detect (recommended): this is the default setting, and it makes your chatbot multilingual.
- The chatbot answers in the language of the visitor's latest message, whatever it is. A customer who writes in Italian gets an answer in Italian, even if your website and documents are in English.
- The welcome message follows the language of the page being viewed, or otherwise the language of the visitor's browser.
- On a multilingual website (for example with WPML or Polylang on WordPress), if the visitor switches language before writing, the welcome message switches too.
A fixed language: the chatbot always answers in that language, even if the visitor writes in another one. Only choose this if all your customers speak the same language and you want to avoid any surprise.
You don't need to translate your website or documents. The chatbot translates the information it finds there into the visitor's language itself.
Watch out for settings that replace your message
Changing the Language or choosing a System Instruction Template resets the first message to a default text ("Hello! How can I help you today?" or its equivalent). Set the language and template first, then write your welcome message last.
Before saving, always re-read the First Message (Greeting) field.
What's next?
- Add quick replies under the welcome message.
- Customize the appearance of the chat window.
- Test the chatbot by writing in another language.
Can't find your answer? info@scan-chat.ai