Chatbot Behavior Settings

Customize your chatbot's personality, behavior, and appearance.

How to get there: Go to Setup → Chatbot in the top menu, then click on your chatbot to open its settings. The settings are organized in sidebar tabs described below.

General Settings

These settings are found in the Identity → Opening Message tab.

Opening Message

The first message visitors see when they open the chat. Make it welcoming and helpful:

"Hi! I'm here to help answer your questions about [Your Company]. What would you like to know?"

Input Placeholder

Text shown in the message input field before the visitor types:

"Type your question here..."

Conversation Starters

Found in the Conversation Starters tab. Quick-action buttons that help visitors get started. Examples:

  • "What are your prices?"
  • "How do I get started?"
  • "Talk to a human"

Add up to 4 conversation starters to guide common questions.

AI Behavior

These settings are found in the Business Info tab.

Tone

Set how your chatbot communicates. You have two options, and you choose one or the other:

Option 1: Pick a Tone preset

Choose from the dropdown. Tones marked with an emoji are "expressive" — the AI is allowed to use emojis in its replies. The others have any model-emitted emojis stripped before the visitor sees them, which keeps replies on-brand for more formal businesses.

Expressive tones (emojis allowed in replies):

  • Appreciative
  • Curious
  • Empathetic
  • Energetic
  • Friendly
  • Humorous
  • Supportive

Neutral / formal tones (emojis stripped from replies):

  • Assertive
  • Authoritative
  • Conciliatory
  • Informative
  • Inspirational
  • Objective
  • Persuasive
  • Professional
  • Thoughtful
  • Urgent

Option 2: Write your own Tone of Voice (advanced)

Click "Advanced: write a custom Tone of Voice" to expand the textarea. You get up to 400 characters to describe in your own words exactly how the chatbot should sound. For example: "Friendly and conversational. Use short sentences. Avoid jargon. No emojis."

When the textarea is filled, it overrides the Tone preset above (the dropdown becomes disabled and a small "in use" badge appears next to the Advanced button). Clear the textarea to go back to using a preset.

Controlling emojis from the textarea

If your custom Tone of Voice contains an explicit emoji instruction, that wins over the preset:

  • Phrases like "no emojis", "don't use emojis", "avoid emojis", "without emojis" (or Dutch "geen emojis", "gebruik geen emojis") strip emojis from replies.
  • Phrases like "use emojis", "emojis allowed", "feel free to use emojis" (or Dutch "gebruik emojis") allow emojis through.
  • If you don't mention emojis at all, the bot falls back to the Tone preset's emoji policy (so a Friendly preset will still allow emojis, a Professional preset will still strip them).

Business Description

Tell the AI about your business so it can answer accurately:

"We are a SaaS company that provides customer communication tools for small businesses."

Focus Areas

Guide the AI on what topics to prioritize:

"Product features, pricing, integrations, customer support"

Custom Instructions

Add specific rules for your chatbot:

"Always recommend scheduling a demo for pricing questions. Never discuss competitor products."

Appearance

These settings are found in the Branding tab under Identity in the sidebar.

How to get there: Go to Setup → Chatbot in the top menu → click your chatbot → IdentityBranding.

Following Widget Design

By default, your chatbot inherits colors from the widget it's installed on. You'll see a message: "Colors follow [Widget Name]" with two options:

  • Edit Widget Design — Opens the widget's design tab where you can change the theme, brand color, and other settings. All changes automatically apply to the chatbot.
  • Customize — Enables custom chatbot colors that override the widget theme.

When using custom colors, you can click Reset to Widget to go back to following the widget design.

Upload a custom avatar or logo to display at the top of your chatbot. This is the image visitors see in the chat header. Recommended size: 200x200 pixels.

Visual Editor

When custom colors are enabled, the Visual Editor lets you customize every part of the chatbot:

  • Quick Color Themes — Pre-made color presets to get started quickly
  • Click-to-edit — Click any part of the preview (header, messages, input, buttons) to edit its colors
  • Header — Background and text color
  • Messages — Bot message and user message colors
  • Input area — Text field and send button colors
  • Quick buttons — Conversation starter button styling

Custom CSS

Found in AdvancedDisplay tab. Add custom CSS rules to further style your chatbot widget. Use your browser's Inspect Element to find class names.

Data Collection

These settings are found in the Customer Data tab (under the Lead generation section in the sidebar).

Lead Capture Fields

Enable fields to collect visitor information:

  • Email - Required for follow-up
  • Phone - For callback requests
  • Name - Personalize the conversation
  • Company - B2B lead qualification

When to Ask

Choose when to request information:

  • At the start of the conversation
  • After a few messages
  • When escalating to a human

Per-Visitor Rate Limit

Found in AI Settings tab. Cap how many messages a single visitor can send within a time window. Useful to prevent one visitor (or a bot) from burning through your monthly credits in a single conversation.

How to get there: Go to Setup → Chatbot in the top menu → click your chatbot → AI Settings → scroll to Per-visitor rate limit.

Settings

Field What it does
Messages per window Max number of messages one visitor can send in the time window. Leave empty (or 0) to disable.
Window (seconds) Length of the time window. Common values: 60 (1 minute), 3600 (1 hour), 86400 (1 day).
Limit message Custom message shown to the visitor when they hit the limit. Leave empty to use the default ("You have sent too many messages. Please wait a moment before continuing.").

How It Works

The limit is per session (per conversation), not per IP, so multiple visitors from the same network are not affected by each other.

When the limit is reached, the chatbot stops responding to that visitor until the window expires, and shows your custom message. The visitor's existing conversation is preserved; only new messages are blocked.

This setting is off by default. The standard 10-messages-per-minute safety throttle still applies regardless, to protect against rapid-fire spam.

Example use cases:

  • Free tier protection: 30 messages per hour to prevent abuse on a public-facing chatbot
  • Generous defaults: 100 messages per day for a normal support chatbot
  • Tight cost control: 10 messages per hour for chatbots on small credit plans

Conversation Timeout

Conversations are automatically closed after 20 minutes of visitor inactivity. Once closed, the conversation is analyzed for training quality and transcripts are sent to your configured destinations.

If a visitor returns and sends a new message, the conversation reopens automatically and will be re-analyzed when it closes again.

Transcripts

These settings are found in the Notifications → Where to Send tab (under the Lead generation section in the sidebar).

Enable Transcripts

The master toggle to turn transcript processing on or off. When enabled, conversations are analyzed after they close and notifications are sent based on your conditions.

Send to Customer

When enabled, visitors who shared their email automatically receive a copy of the conversation transcript.

Send to You

Choose which conversations should trigger a notification to your team. You can combine multiple conditions — a notification is sent when any of the selected conditions is met (OR logic).

Condition What it does
All conversations Every chat triggers a notification (including test messages)
Visitor shared contact info Only when the visitor provides their email address
Lead info collected Only when all required lead flow fields are filled in
Chatbot needs help Only when the AI health score is below 60 (see Health Score Reference)
Custom rules AI evaluates your custom condition (e.g. "Only if visitor asks about pricing")
Never No business notifications (customer transcripts still work if enabled)

Example: Select both "Visitor shared contact info" and "Chatbot needs help" to get notified for actionable leads and conversations where the chatbot struggled — while skipping routine chats that were handled well.

Where to Send Notifications

Matching conversations are delivered to:

  • Boei Inbox — Always included. Matching conversations appear as open threads for your team to review and respond.
  • Email — Add up to 5 email addresses to receive transcript notifications.
  • Webhook — Send transcript data to your CRM or other tools via webhook.

Language

Automatic Translation

Enable to automatically detect and respond in the visitor's language. The AI will translate its responses while maintaining accuracy.

Default Language

Set the primary language for your chatbot. This affects the default UI text and conversation starters.