Synonyms

Synonyms are a group of alternative key words or phrases that users can use to mean the same thing.

How is this useful?

Because users rarely type in perfect English, we add synonyms, jargons or abbreviations to the AI-generated assistant, so that it understands queries less like a machine and more like a human.

How does this work?

If a user enters these alternative words/phrases, the virtual assistant will run through the list of entities to find a matching entity.  Once the entity it belongs to is found, the virtual assistant will respond with the configured answer, or if no entities were matched, it will give a fallback response like asking the user to rephrase their question.

For example:

There are a few ways one can say physician: doctor, medic, surgeon, clinician, dr. etc.

If an entity for physician is set up with the above list of synonyms, when the user types “I want to see a doctor”, the Bot is able to detect that “doctor” carries the same meaning as physician.

Steps to configuring synonyms:

1. Navigate to the Entities dashboard.
2. Click “Add Entity”
3. Give a name to the group in “Entity Name”. In this example, it would be Doctor.
4. Under Type, select “List/Synonyms”
5. Enter the most representative word for the group of synonyms. Eg. “Doctor”.
6. Click “+ New Synonym” to add the synonyms into the group
   Eg. “physician”, “medic”, “surgeon”, “clicinician”, “dr.”
7. Click “submit”