Chatbot messages and language

What it is

Messages & language owns the words visitors read before the chatbot has said anything useful, plus the typography they read them in. Five things live here:

• Primary language — the default language of the built-in copy and the text direction.
• Welcome message — shown automatically when someone opens the chat.
• Fallback message — sent when the chatbot cannot understand or hits an error.
• Response sound — an optional short sound when a reply arrives.
• Chat font — family and size for the chat window.

There is a widespread misunderstanding worth clearing up immediately: the primary language does not restrict which languages the chatbot can reply in. The chatbot answers each visitor in the language they wrote in. The primary language sets the default message copy and the text direction of the interface. Someone writing in Spanish to a chatbot whose primary language is Arabic still gets a Spanish reply.

When you would use it

• Before go-live, because the welcome and fallback are the two messages most visitors will actually read.
• When feedback shows people were annoyed by the "I don't know" reply.
• When your audience is right-to-left and the layout needs to match.

Where to find it

Open Dashboard → Chatbots → your chatbot → Settings → Messages & language (?tab=messages).

Steps

1. Open the chatbot → Settings → Messages & language.
2. Primary language. Pick the language most of your visitors will open with. Choosing an RTL language such as Arabic sets the chat's default direction to right-to-left, and the font options change to match the script.
3. Welcome message. Write the greeting. Up to 2000 characters, though good ones are one or two sentences.
4. Fallback message. Write what happens when the chatbot cannot answer. Also up to 2000 characters. There is a Reset to default if you want the platform wording back.
5. Response sound. Optionally switch on a reply sound and pick one — Chime, Ding, Pop, or Bell. Each can be previewed before you commit.
6. Chat font. Choose a family and a size (Small, Medium, Large, X-Large). The list is filtered to fonts that suit your chatbot's script.
7. Watch the live preview, which shows both the welcome message and a sample of the fallback.
8. Select Save changes.

Writing a welcome message that works

The welcome message has one job: tell the visitor what this chatbot can do, so they ask a question it can answer.

Weak: "Hello! How can I help you today?" — true of every chatbot ever made, and gives no hint of scope.

Better: "Hi! I can answer questions about our shipping, returns, and sizing. What do you need?"

The second version quietly steers people toward the knowledge you actually uploaded, which raises your answer rate without touching a single document. Keep it to a sentence or two — long greetings get scrolled past.

Writing a fallback message that does not annoy people

The fallback fires when the chatbot cannot understand or cannot ground an answer. It is the highest-risk sentence in your whole setup, because it reaches people who are already slightly frustrated.

Three rules:

1. Do not apologise twice. One "sorry" is plenty.
2. Offer a real next step. "Try asking about our returns policy" or "email support@example.com" beats a dead end.
3. Do not promise a human unless there is one. "Someone will get back to you shortly" at 11pm on a Saturday is how you lose a customer. If you genuinely want a person involved, build it properly — see Handoff to a human.

A good pattern: "I couldn't find that in our documentation. I can help with orders, shipping, and returns — or you can reach the team at support@example.com."

What belongs here, and what does not

You want to…	Go to
Greet visitors	This tab — welcome message
Say something when stuck	This tab — fallback message
Set tone, or ban a topic ("never mention competitors")	Write instructions
Change answer length or show sources	Chatbot AI settings
Change colours or avatar	Chatbot appearance
Change your dashboard language	Appearance, language and timezone

Writing "always be formal" into the welcome message does nothing — the welcome message is literal text shown to the visitor, not a rule the chatbot follows. Rules go in Instructions.

What you will see

The tab reuses the same fields as the create wizard, with a live preview beside them. Each message field shows a character counter, and the preview labels which bubble is the welcome and which is the fallback. Text direction in the preview follows the primary language.

Limits and plan notes

Welcome and fallback messages accept up to 2000 characters each. Available on every plan; you need permission to edit chatbots.

Saving this form does not spend credits and does not trigger retraining. The font and sound choices are cosmetic and apply everywhere the chat renders — Test Chatbot, the hosted page, and the widget.

Common problems

The chatbot still greets people in English after I changed the language.

Confirm you saved, then hard-refresh the hosted page — the public chat caches its configuration briefly. Also check you edited the chatbot you are actually testing.

My fallback message never appears.

Good news, mostly: the chatbot is finding answers. To see the fallback deliberately, ask something clearly outside your knowledge in Test Chatbot.

The fallback appears constantly.

That is a knowledge problem, not a message problem. Open Analytics → Needs attention to see the exact questions that failed, then fill those gaps. See The chatbot Analytics tab.

My Arabic text is laid out left to right.

Set the primary language to Arabic and save. The chat's default direction follows the primary language.

The font I want is not in the list.

The list is curated per script — Latin fonts for Latin-script chatbots, Arabic fonts for Arabic. Custom font uploads are not supported.