Understanding natural language

So far, we have seen how the conversational flow happens using buttons. In each case, the user has to press a button or type in information to fill in a slot, which makes the conversation progress. However, it is possible to have users initiate conversation and navigate using natural language (NL) input as well in Chatfuel. In this section, we will explore how to make the chatbot understand the user's natural language inputs and take action.

Default block

Alongside the Welcome message block, there is a Default answer block. This block is used by the chatbot as response to any input from the user that it does not understand. Go ahead and change the contents of the block as follows:

Now test the bot by typing in a question to the chatbot on Messenger. You can see how the default message gets used:

Let us now explore how to handle NL input so that users don't end up with this default response. To set up the chatbot to understand NL inputs, find and click the Set Up...