Small talk

Small talk is used to provide responses to casual conversation. This feature can greatly improve the end-user experience by answering common questions outside the scope of your agent.

Small talk is available in two ways:

• Built-in small talk: When enabled for an agent, it handles casual conversation automatically, without adding intents to your agent.
• Prebuilt small talk: When the prebuilt small talk agent is imported, it provides intents to handle casual conversation.

Built-in small talk

Enable built-in small talk for an agent

To enable built-in small talk for your agent:

1. Go to the Dialogflow ES console.
2. Click Small talk in the left sidebar menu.
3. Toggle Enable on.
4. Click Save.

Customize built-in small talk responses

Once enabled, built-in small talk responses can be customized to fit your branding or product needs. Each response category is organized in folders. To customize responses:

1. Go to the Dialogflow ES console.
2. Click Small talk in the left sidebar menu.
3. Click a response category folder.
4. Add new or edit existing responses.
5. Click Save.

Built-in small talk limitations

The following limitations apply to the built-in small talk:

• Only supported for some languages.
• Only available for the global region.
• Does not work for mega agents.
• Based on Google Assistant policy, enabling built-in small talk in its entirety will cause your action to be rejected. You can import the prebuilt small talk agent and update or delete intents that do not comply with policy.

Prebuilt small talk

Import prebuilt small talk agent

To import the prebuilt small talk agent to your project:

1. Go to the Dialogflow ES console.
2. Click Prebuilt agents in the left sidebar menu.
3. Hover the mouse over the Small Talk prebuilt agent.
4. Click Import.
5. Either create a new GCP project or choose an existing one.
6. Click OK.

Customize prebuilt small talk responses

To customize the prebuilt small talk agent, edit the imported intents as you normally would.