#Commands – Mainstay

Overview

#Commands are special keywords that a partner can set up in their accounts. The command will initiate a specific script to the contact depending on their channel (SMS or Webchat). These keywords can be used by contacts at any point of the conversation.

Video Tutorial: https://www.loom.com/share/979b5b4f49d841388b29d666aa99fc73

These keywords can help you provide your contacts with additional resources to use at any point of the conversation. For example, contacts can decide if they want to initiate the #followup command to get an answer from a human.

Informing Contacts

There are many ways to let your contacts know that these #Commands are available to them.

You can add the command to a Knowledge base answer so the contact can decide to use it whenever they ask about a specific topic. For example, add the #followup to the fallback responses that way contacts can choose to ask for #followup whenever the bot doesn't know the answer. You also should put it in any understanding where the contact asks to speak to a human.
You can also mention these commands on your social media platforms or your website to get contacts to engage with your bot. For example, you can have a command that captures feedback (ex: #givefeedback) and advertise the command on your different platforms so that contacts can give you feedback. Keep in mind that these scripts can use save actions in case you wanted to capture certain responses and reward those contacts who took the time to provide feedback.
You can also create a command that lists all available commands via a script. For example #help (or #commands) can trigger a script that tells contacts about the other commands that you created. You can mention this command in your intro script to let contacts know what keywords they can use throughout their conversation with the bot.

Channel-specific Commands

#Commands allow different scripts based on the contact's channel. This allows you to add a different script for webchat users, where you can ask for contact information like email or phone number in order to be able to follow up with the contact once they exit the webchat conversation.

Go Into Mascot
Navigate to the Knowledgebase page
Go into the Commands section

Creating #Commands

Log into the platform and navigate to the Knowledge Base section, and then the #Commands tool in the sidebar.
Click the Create Command button to open the Command Editor drawer.
Provide the keyword that triggers this script.
For each channel your institution uses, you can then select the script to trigger when this keyword is received.

Editing a command

From the table, you can disable the command. This means that when a contact mentions the command it will not initiate the script but rather try to match to an understanding.
Click the edit button to change the name, description, or script(s) triggered.

Reporting

To get a CSV of the times your #command has been invoked, click the download button from the edit view.
This will download a CSV of everyone has interacted with the script. You can customize which default, custom, and campaign/script fields to include, as well as the name of the file.
Make sure that your browser supports multiple downloads, since it will download different files if you use a different script for every channel.

Default Commands

Several commands are automatically available to contacts:

#pause: This allows contacts to temporarily opt-out of receiving messages. See Opt-Out Commands.
#stop: This opts out the contact so they no longer receive messages. However, this status is not stored at the phone carrier level (like actual STOP would be).
#language: This allows contacts to set their language preference for all outgoing messages. See Multi-language for SMS and Multi-language for web-chat.
#login and #logout: These allow contacts to authenticate (and end an authenticated session) for personalized messages. This can be configured in the contact authentication settings.
#changename: This allows contacts to set a preferred name for personalized messages. See contacts page. This can be disabled on the main Settings page: