Knowledge Base
The Knowledge Base is everything your AI knows about your business as fact: your FAQs, your services and prices, and any documents you upload. When a customer asks something, the AI answers from here. A complete, accurate Knowledge Base is the single biggest thing that turns a generic bot into one that actually represents your business.
Overview
You manage your Knowledge Base under AI Configuration › Knowledge in your portal. It holds three kinds of items:
- FAQs for question-and-answer pairs.
- Services for your offerings, with prices and details.
- Documents (PDF or TXT) for longer reference material, on paid plans.
All three share one item limit set by your plan, shown as a counter at the top of the tab. The quickest way to fill it is the website scan, which reads your site and adds items for you.
Knowledge vs Instructions
This is the most important distinction to understand, and it decides how well your bot works:
- The Knowledge Base holds facts the AI looks up: hours, prices, policies, "do you offer X?".
- Instructions hold behavior: how the AI should act, what to recommend, what to ask first, what rules to follow.
Put anything you will keep updating (especially prices) in the Knowledge Base, not in your instructions. That way you change it in one place and never have to rewrite a long instruction block. Instructions and tone live in the AI Configuration guide.
A handful of clear FAQs and an accurate service menu do more for answer quality than pages of instructions. Start with facts.
How the AI Uses It
When a customer sends a message, the AI searches your Knowledge Base for the items most relevant to what they asked, then uses those to write its answer. The search combines two methods: meaning-based search (so it matches even when the customer phrases things differently than you did) and keyword search (so exact terms still land). It picks the best matches across your FAQs, services, and documents.
If nothing in your Knowledge Base matches, the AI falls back to your instructions and general handling. Your Restrictions always take priority: even if a fact exists, the AI declines topics you marked off-limits.
Each FAQ tracks how many times it has been used, so over time you can see which answers are pulling the most weight and spot gaps where you may need to add more.
FAQs
An FAQ is a question and an answer. They are the workhorse of the Knowledge Base and the best tool for the specific questions you get over and over.
- Question: phrase it the way customers actually ask, for example "Do you take walk-ins?" rather than "Walk-in policy".
- Answer: keep it short and factual. The AI rewords it to fit the conversation and your tone.
Each FAQ can be turned on or off, edited, or deleted, and shows its usage count once it starts getting used.
Services
The Service Menu is your list of offerings with pricing. The AI uses it to answer "what do you charge for X?" and to guide booking when that goal is on. Each service has:
| Field | What it is |
|---|---|
| Service Name | The offering, for example "60-Minute Massage". |
| Price | The amount. Leave it empty for offerings that need a quote. |
| Price Unit | Fixed Price, Per Hour, Per Unit, or Quote Required. |
| Duration | Length in minutes (optional). Used for booking. |
| Description | A short explanation of what is included (optional). |
A service can be marked Virtual so that a booking automatically sends a Google Meet link and email invite. That option only becomes available once you have connected Google Calendar and turned on Meet invites in your calendar settings.
Put your real prices here rather than in your instructions. When a price changes, you update one service and the AI is instantly correct everywhere.
Documents
Documents let the AI answer from longer material that does not fit neatly into a single FAQ: policies, a service manual, detailed product specs, a returns policy. ChatGenius reads the file, indexes its content, and the AI can pull the relevant passage when a customer asks about it.
- File types: PDF and TXT.
- Size: up to 5MB per file.
- Availability: document storage is included on paid plans. The free plan does not include document uploads.
Give each document a clear name, since you will see it in your list and can activate, deactivate, or delete it like any other item. Documents count toward both your item limit and your storage limit (see Plan Limits & Storage).
Use FAQs for quick, common answers and documents for the long reference material behind them. A short FAQ answers fast; a document gives the AI depth to draw on when someone digs deeper.
Website Smart Setup
The fastest way to build your Knowledge Base is to let ChatGenius read your website. On the Identity tab, paste your URL and click Scan Website. It reads several pages of your site (it skips blogs and similar pages to stay focused) and pulls out:
- A business summary
- Services and pricing
- FAQs
- Contact details (phone, email, address)
It cleans up the results, removes duplicates and obvious calls-to-action, and adds what it found to your Knowledge Base, up to the number of item slots you have left. The scan takes one to two minutes, and you get a review panel showing what it found before anything is final. Re-scan any time your site changes.
Enter your real business website, not a social media profile. The scan adds new items and skips duplicates, so it will not wipe out work you have already done.
Adding & Managing Items
At the top of the Knowledge tab, three buttons add items by hand: Add FAQ, Add Service, and Import Document. Each opens a short form.
For the items you already have, you can:
- Search across questions, answers, services, and categories to find an item fast.
- Edit any item in place.
- Activate or deactivate an item. An inactive item is kept but the AI ignores it.
- Delete a single item, or use select mode to remove several at once.
Only active items count toward your plan's item limit. If you are near the cap but want to keep something for later, deactivate it instead of deleting it. That frees a slot and you can switch it back on any time.
Plan Limits & Storage
FAQs, services, and documents all share one item limit per plan. Documents also use a separate storage allowance. Both are shown as meters at the top of the Knowledge tab.
| Plan | Knowledge items | Document storage |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 15 | No document uploads |
| Creator | 40 | 5 MB |
| Professional | 100 | 25 MB |
| Business | 300 | 50 MB |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom |
Each document can be up to 5MB, within your plan's total storage. When you reach the item limit, the add buttons are disabled until you remove or deactivate items, or upgrade your plan.
Best Practices
- Scan first, refine second. Let the website scan do the heavy lifting, then tidy up what it imported.
- Write FAQs in your customers' words. Match how they actually phrase questions, not your internal terms.
- Keep answers short and factual. The AI handles the wording and tone; you supply the truth.
- Prices belong in Services. Never bury a price in your instructions where you will forget to update it.
- FAQs for quick answers, documents for depth. Do not paste a whole policy into one FAQ.
- Keep it current. Update an item the moment something changes; the next message uses the new version.
- Favor focused over huge. A tight, accurate Knowledge Base beats a sprawling one full of stale or duplicate entries.
Troubleshooting
The AI isn't using a fact I added
Check that the item is Active. If it is, try rephrasing it as an FAQ worded the way a customer would ask. Also confirm you are not at your item limit, which would have blocked the item from saving.
I can't import a document
Document uploads require a paid plan. If you are on a paid plan, check that the file is a PDF or TXT under 5MB and that you have storage left. The button's tooltip explains which of these is blocking it.
I hit my item limit
Remove or deactivate items you no longer need, or upgrade to a plan with a higher limit. Deactivating frees a slot without losing the item.
The AI gave outdated information
Edit the item with the correct details. Changes take effect on the next message the AI handles, with no separate publish step.
FAQ
How many items can I store?
It depends on your plan, from 15 on Free up to 300 on Business, with custom limits on Enterprise. FAQs, services, and documents all share that one count. See Plan Limits & Storage.
What file types can I upload as documents?
PDF and TXT, up to 5MB each, within your plan's storage allowance.
Does deactivating an item free up a slot?
Yes. Only active items count toward your limit, so you can deactivate something to make room and switch it back on later.
Can the AI really answer from a document?
Yes. Uploaded documents are read and indexed, and the AI pulls the relevant passage when a customer's question matches it.
Will the website scan overwrite what I already have?
No. It adds new items up to your remaining slots and skips duplicates. Your existing items are left alone.
What's the difference between an FAQ and an instruction?
An FAQ is a fact the AI looks up. An instruction is a rule for how the AI should behave. Facts go here; behavior goes in your instructions.
Next Steps
- Set your assistant's tone, goals, and rules in AI Configuration.
- Put your knowledge to work with Comment Triggers and Quick Replies.
- Build guided conversations in the Visual Flow Builder.
- New here? Start with Your First Automation, or browse the full documentation hub.