Getting started · Lesson 8 of 8
Create a help center for your customers
With a help center, customers find answers themselves, at your own address such as help.example.com. Your AI agent can use the same articles, so you only write them once. The help center is part of Pro and Enterprise.
20 min
What you'll learn
- The right order to set things up
- Create categories and articles people can find
- Connect your own domain with a CNAME record
- See which articles are still missing
Step by step
- 1
Start with your domain
Go to Help Center in the menu. You'll see a checklist with five items: domain, branding, category, first article and enable. Start at Domains and click Add Domain, because Branding only works once there's a domain. You must use a subdomain, so help.example.com and not example.com.
- 2
Add the CNAME record at your domain provider
After you add the domain, Bugalou shows a CNAME record with its target. Create that record where your domain is managed, or ask your website administrator to. Then click Verify Now. DNS can take 5 to 30 minutes, so if it doesn't work straight away, wait a bit and try again.
- 3
Create your categories
Go to Categories and click New Category. Use your customers' words, not your internal departments. A gym, for example, chooses Membership, Classes and Payment. Start with three to five categories; each article belongs in exactly one category, and you can't create an article without one.
- 4
Write your first articles
Go to Articles and click New Article. Fill in Article Title, the slug, Category and Content, and set Status to Published, because a Draft isn't visible to customers or your AI. Use the customer's question as the title, such as How do I cancel my membership? Under SEO Settings, fill in the SEO Title and Meta Description, so the article shows up properly in Google.
- 5
Adjust the branding
Go to Branding and set your colours, logo and header text. You see the result straight away in the preview, on mobile too. Choose enough contrast between text and background. Customers should recognise they're still with you.
- 6
Go live and connect it to your chat
Click Enable in the checklist, then open your own address in the browser to check that everything's right. Under Channels › Website Chat › Behavior, switch on the Help tab or Show search field, so customers can also read your articles in the chat. If a customer finds nothing, they can send a question through the form, which arrives in your inbox.
Common mistakes
Entering your main domain
Bugalou only accepts a subdomain. If you entered example.com, your whole website would be affected. So use something like help.example.com or support.example.com.
Leaving articles as Draft
Only articles with the status Published are visible and used by the AI agent. Check this after writing, especially if you've just changed something.
A verification that keeps failing
Often the record's name is wrong, or there's still an old record on the same subdomain. Compare your record letter by letter with what Bugalou shows, and wait a while after a change.
Tips
- Start with the five questions you get most often. They give you the most return.
- Check Searched without a result on the overview: those are the words customers found nothing for, so the articles you still need to write.
- Each article shows its views and the responses to Was this article helpful?, so use them to improve.
- Update articles when your policy changes, because the AI agent uses what's written there.
You're done when
- Your domain is verified
- At least three articles are published
- Your help center opens at your own address, on mobile and desktop
- Your AI agent answers from an article in the playground
Frequently asked questions
How is it different from the internal knowledge base?
The help center is for your customers and is online. The Internal Knowledge Base in the menu is for your own team.
Does my AI agent use the articles?
Yes, it uses published articles as knowledge for its answers. Test that in the playground with a question from an article.
Which plan includes the help center?
Pro and Enterprise, and you can try it during a Pro trial.
How long until my domain works?
Allow 5 to 30 minutes after setting the CNAME record. Then click Verify Now.