OpenDialog Docs
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  • GETTING STARTED
    • Introduction
    • Getting ready
    • Billing and plans
    • Quick Start AI Agents
      • Quick Start AI Agent
      • The "Start from Scratch" AI Agent
        • Chat Management Conversation
        • Welcome Conversation
        • Topic Conversation
        • Global No Match Conversation
        • Supporting LLM Actions
        • Semantic Classifier: Query Classifier
      • A Process Handling AI Agent
  • STEP BY STEP GUIDES
    • AI Agent Creation Overview
    • Add a new topic of discussion
    • Use knowledge sources via RAG
    • Adding a structured conversation
    • Add a 3rd party integration
    • Test and tweak your AI Agent
    • Publish your AI Agent
  • CORE CONCEPTS
    • OpenDialog Approach
      • Designing Conversational AI Agents
    • OpenDialog Platform
      • Scenarios
        • Conversations
        • Scenes
        • Turns and intents
      • Language Services
      • OpenDialog Account Management
        • Creating and managing users
        • Deleting OpenDialog account
        • Account Security
    • OpenDialog Conversation Engine
    • Contexts and attributes
      • Contexts
      • Attributes
      • Attribute Management
      • Conditions and operators
      • Composite Attributes
  • CREATE AI APPLICATIONS
    • Designing your application
      • Conversation Design
        • Conversational Patterns
          • Introduction to conversational patterns
          • Building robust assistants
            • Contextual help
            • Restart
            • End chat
            • Contextual and Global No Match
            • Contextual FAQ
          • Openings
            • Anatomy of an opening
            • Transactional openings
            • Additional information
          • Authentication
            • Components
            • Example dialog
            • Using in OpenDialog
          • Information collection
            • Components
            • Example dialog
            • Using in OpenDialog
            • Additional information
          • Recommendations
            • Components
            • Example dialog
            • Additional information
          • Extended telling
            • Components
            • Example dialog
            • Additional information
          • Repair
            • Types of repair
            • User request not understood
            • Example dialog
            • Additional information
          • Transfer
            • Components
            • Example dialog
            • Additional information
          • Closing
            • Components
            • Example dialog
            • Using in OpenDialog
            • Additional information
        • Best practices
          • Use Case
          • Subject Matter Expertise
          • Business Goals
          • User needs
            • Primary research
            • Secondary research
            • Outcome: user profile
          • Assistant personality
          • Sample dialogs
          • Conversation structure
          • API Integration Capabilities
          • NLU modeling
          • Testing strategy
          • The team
            • What does a conversation designer do
          • Select resources
      • Message Design
        • Message editor
        • Constructing Messages
        • Message Conditions
        • Messages best practices
        • Subsequent Messages - Virtual Intents
        • Using Attributes in Messages
        • Using Markdown in messages
        • Message Types
          • Text Message
          • Image Message
          • Button Message
          • Date Picker Message
          • Audio Message
          • Form Message
          • Full Page Message
          • Conversation Handover message
          • Autocomplete Message
          • Address Autocomplete Message
          • List Message
          • Rich Message
          • Location Message
          • E-Sign Message
          • File Upload Message
          • Meta Messages
            • Progress Bar Message
          • Attribute Message
      • Webchat Interface design
        • Webchat Interface Settings
        • Webchat Controls
      • Accessibility
      • Inclusive design
    • Leveraging Generative AI
      • Language Services
        • Semantic Intent Classifier
          • OpenAI
          • Azure
          • Google Gemini
          • Output attributes
        • Retrieval Augmented Generation
        • Example-based intent classification [Deprecated]
      • Interpreters
        • Available interpreters
          • OpenDialog interpreter
          • Amazon Lex interpreter
          • Google Dialogflow
            • Google Dialogflow interpreter
            • Google Dialogflow Knowledge Base
          • OpenAI interpreter
        • Using a language service interpreter
        • Interpreter Orchestration
        • Troubleshooting interpreters
      • LLM Actions
        • OpenAI
        • Azure OpenAI
        • Output attributes
        • Using conversation history (memory) in LLM actions
        • LLM Action Analytics
    • 3rd party Integrations in your application
      • Webhook actions
      • Actions from library
        • Freshdesk Action
        • Send to Email Action
        • Set Attributes Action
      • Conversation Hand-off
        • Chatwoot
    • Previewing your application
    • Launching your application
    • Monitoring your application
    • Debugging your application
    • Translating your application
    • FAQ
    • Troubleshooting and Common Problems
  • Developing With OpenDialog
    • Integrating with OpenDialog
    • Actions
      • Webhook actions
      • LLM actions
    • WebChat
      • Chat API
      • WebChat authentication
      • User Tracking
      • Load Webchat within page Element
      • How to enable JavaScript in your browser
      • SDK
        • Methods
        • Events
        • Custom Components
    • External APIs
  • Release Notes
    • Version 3 Upgrade Guide
    • Release Notes
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On this page
  1. CREATE AI APPLICATIONS
  2. Designing your application
  3. Conversation Design
  4. Conversational Patterns
  5. Openings

Anatomy of an opening

The specifics of what is included in an opening depends on the context, the mode, the users, the channel and other factors. Much of the academic research on conversational openings comes from telephone conversations, which may or may not fit your use case well. What are the common patterns we see in openings?

Summons/answer

Summons (aka trigger)/answer (ring → hello?; knock knock → come in)

This establishes the availability of both parties for a conversation. Completion of SA creates non-terminality, i.e. the interaction is expected to continue. This seems to be what popup chatbots often leverage to create/coerce engagement, i.e. it feels awkward to leave a popup bot hanging so people may be more likely to engage with it (either responding or closing).

Greetings

A: Hello

B: Hello

Identification/recognition

Caller ID or other ways of already knowing who’s there can modify this.

  • Name sharing, name request, name giving, name correction

  • Establish footing, roles for each participant

  • Organizational affiliation (“I’m Tom, your Lowe’s bot”)

Welfare check

How-are-you sequences. These can vary substantially across cultures.

News check

What’s new?

Authentication

(“What is your account number?”); many designs include this as a required part of an opening sequence, but it is a worse experience to require a user to authenticate when their reason for being there doesn’t actually need authentication. As a result, the authentication process will be treated as its own pattern (see below). – separated into a distinct OpenDialog pattern

These patterns are informed by human-human conversational patterns, however some might not be directly transferable to bot-human conversations. It therefore makes sense to take a user-centered approach and handle these patterns should a user invoke them. The app, however, likely should not invoke them on its own (unless contextually relevant).

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Last updated 1 year ago