Best Practices: Leveraging the Help Center Chatbot

Handshake Digital Assistant, our Help Center-based chatbot, provides an improved conversational experience on-demand with 24/7 availability. 

• Each response synthesizes information across relevant articles to quickly unblock next steps, enable key workflows, or share ways to optimize tools.
• We've also created a more seamless handoff to Support for certain processes and issues best handled by a specialist, reducing friction during ticket creation. 

We're always looking for opportunities to improve our user experience, which includes surfacing tips to engage effectively with this resource! 

Select the appropriate user type

Choosing the right user type is the first step to ensuring you have the best experience possible. Our chatbot uses Help Center content in combination with customized instructions and guidance, which varies based on the user type selected.   

When opening the chatbot, choose your user type based on your primary role in Handshake.  

• Student or alumnus - you're a current student or alum using Handshake to look for internships or jobs, connect with employers, participate in fairs and events, or engage with your school's Career Center
• Employer - you work for a company that is hiring or will be hiring and are using Handshake to post internships or jobs, register and participate in school-hosted career fairs, or create and promote events for students/alumni
  • If you're an employer, always only select "Employer"!
    • Selecting Career Services or IT will prioritize our EDU partner content first in responses, which may not be relevant or accurately describe steps you should take.
    • Selecting Student or alumnus will scope results to only the student user perspective, which won't include details on employer features or workflows.
• Career Services or IT - you work directly for a Handshake partner school (college, university, or higher education institution) and are using Handshake to facilitate Career Center or campus workflows, i.e. FDS, student syncs via Importer, appointments, creating and managing career fairs, events, or on-campus interviews, etc.
  • If you're an EDU partner, select this option, even if you're helping a student or employer!
    • We include content for each user type in your experience, but prioritize Career Services results first. This accounts for your unique workflows while still supporting you as you help your students and employers, too! 

Have a conversation

When asking a new question, write your message the way you would explain it to a colleague or our Support team! Use sentences or descriptive phrases, include any error messages encountered, share the steps you've taken already, etc. 

Tips bulleted below are accompanied by screenshots of real conversations demonstrating the behavior outlined. 

• Providing more details improves accuracy in each response generated. By describing specific circumstances, our model better understands the goal or outcome desired, then identifies the most relevant content to create a response from.
  • Example conversation:

• If a response provided doesn't quite address the question or issue at hand, try rephrasing the message or providing more context, such as clarifying what you want to do.
  • Example conversation part 1 - the first response isn't quite what was needed:  

• Each message and response plays an important role in how the conversation progresses, building on logic used to refine scope, provide guidance, or redirect as needed.
  • Example conversation part 2 - rephrasing the question provided more clarity on the goal, resulting in an accurate response:  

• When reading a chatbot response, don't hesitate to ask followup questions or dig into the details! This applies the same logic as the tip above, building on conversation history to refine and elaborate.
  • Example conversation - this EDU workflow addressing major mapping leads up to questions about results from a recent job in Importer: 

• In the event the chatbot doesn't have the information necessary to respond, you'll be able to connect with our Support team directly.
  • Example conversation - this is a later portion of the above example, showing specific followup questions about Importer errors, along with an offer to handoff to Support: 

If you choose to proceed with contacting support, the conversation transcript is included in the ticket created – our Support team members read these transcripts first, and having more information available upfront can help expedite the resolution or next steps needed!