Documentation

Conversation starters

Conversation starters are pre-defined buttons that appear at the beginning of a chat, helping visitors start a common conversation with your brand's AI agent in one tap instead of typing a first message.

How It Works

When a user clicks a conversation starter button:

  1. Display: The button's label appears as the user's message in the chat
  2. AI Processing: The prompt (hidden from users) is sent to the AI for processing
  3. Response: The AI generates a response based on the prompt

This separation allows you to craft natural-sounding prompts while keeping user-facing labels concise and friendly.

A starter can also start a workflow instead of asking the AI — see Starters that start a workflow below.

Managing Conversation Starters

Starters live at Brand → (your brand) → Vex → Starters. The tab in the product is labelled just Starters.

They belong to the AI agent, not to the brand: deleting Vex removes its starters along with its suggestions and its report history. Your knowledge is untouched, and a new agent starts with no starters of its own.

Creating Starters

Click "Add Starter" to create a new conversation starter with these fields:

Label
string required
The text users see on the button (max 100 characters). Keep it short and action-oriented.
Start a workflow
select
Optional. Pick one of the brand's active workflows and tapping the starter runs it instead of asking the AI. Leave it on No workflow - send the prompt to the AI for an ordinary starter. The field only appears when your plan includes Workflows and the brand has at least one active workflow.
Prompt
string
The actual question or instruction sent to the AI (minimum 5 characters). This is hidden from users but determines the AI's response. Required unless the starter starts a workflow — then the field reads Prompt (optional) and is only used if the workflow is later deleted or switched off.
Active
boolean
Whether this starter is currently shown to users. Inactive starters remain saved but won't appear in the widget.

AI-Generated Labels

Use the "AI Generate" button to automatically create a concise label based on your prompt. The AI will generate a 1-3 word label with an appropriate emoji.

Starters that start a workflow

When a visitor taps a starter that has a workflow picked, its label appears as their message, the starters disappear, and the workflow runs instead of an AI answer. A tap is a deliberate start, so the rules that decide when a workflow starts on its own don't hold it back.

  • A colleague is assigned to the conversation: nothing starts. The label reaches that colleague as an ordinary visitor message, so they see what was asked for and can start the workflow by hand from the inbox.
  • The workflow is deleted or set to Inactive, or your plan no longer includes Workflows: the starter falls back to its prompt and works like an ordinary starter. If it has no prompt, visitors don't see it until the workflow is active again.

Letting the setup wizard write them

The AI setup wizard — which you can run from Brand → Overview, Brand settings, the chat widget designer or Knowledge — reads your website and can write three or four starters for you, in the language of your site.

It only does this when the agent currently has none. It never adds to, or overwrites, a set you have already built, so a starter you deleted on purpose does not come back on the next run.

Managing Existing Starters

From the starters table, you can:

  • Edit: Modify label, prompt, or active status
  • Translations: Write the label and the prompt in the widget's other languages
  • Delete: Remove starters (with confirmation)
  • Reorder: Use the up/down arrows to change display order
  • Toggle: Enable/disable starters without deleting them

A starter that starts a workflow shows Starts a workflow in the Prompt column.

Best Practice: Order your most important or frequently used starters first, as they appear in the same order in the widget.

Translations

A starter is text you wrote, so it does not follow the visitor's language on its own. Each row has a Translations action (the globe icon). It opens one window for both of the starter's fields — the Label the visitor reads on the button, and the Prompt that is sent to the AI behind it — with your own wording shown read-only at the top and one row per other language below it.

Fill in the languages you serve and leave the rest empty. A visitor whose language has no translation reads the label and prompt stored on the starter itself — exactly what the table shows. To change that wording, use Edit.

If your brand works in a language outside the 38 the widget speaks, you write the label and prompt in that language, and every visitor with no translation of their own reads them. The Translate the empty ones button fills the blanks in one go, free and without using AI credits — see Widget Languages.

Examples

Common Starter Configurations

Store Hours

Label: Store Hours 🕒
Prompt: What are your current store hours and holiday schedule?

Returns

Label: Return Policy ↩️
Prompt: Can you explain your return and exchange policy, including timeframes and conditions?

Contact

Label: Contact Us 📞
Prompt: What are the best ways to contact customer support, including phone numbers and email?

Product Help

Label: Help with Products ❓
Prompt: I'm looking for help with your products. Can you tell me about your most popular items and how to choose the right one?

Best Practices

Keep labels short and scannable - Users should instantly understand what clicking the button will do. Aim for 1-3 words with an emoji.
Make prompts conversational - Write prompts as if the user actually asked that question. Include context about what information they might need.
Cover common scenarios - Focus on the most frequent questions or actions your customers take. Don't try to cover every possible interaction.
Test your prompts - After creating starters, test them in the widget to ensure the AI responses are helpful and accurate.
Inactive starters are hidden - Use the Active toggle to temporarily hide starters during promotions or seasonal changes without losing your configuration.

User Experience

In the chat widget, conversation starters appear as small buttons at the end of the conversation, on the left, right after the last message. Users can tap one to start instantly, or type their own message to begin chatting normally.

The buttons scroll with the conversation and disappear as soon as the visitor sends a message — a starter or one they typed — and the conversation continues with the AI's response, or with the workflow the starter started.

Facebook & Instagram

Starters aren't widget-only: on pages connected through the Meta integration, your top 4 active starters (in display order) are automatically published as tappable opening questions — Meta calls them "ice breakers" — shown when someone opens a new Messenger or Instagram conversation. Tapping one works exactly like in the widget: the label appears as the visitor's message and the AI answers the prompt. Changes you save here re-sync to your connected pages automatically.

Starters that start a workflow are left out, because an ice breaker can only ask the AI. The next starters in your order take their place, so the page still shows four whenever you have four that ask the AI.