Attributes help you save data about users, enabling you to understand them better and service them more effectively. In ChatGen, there are two kinds of attributes that get captured:


ChatGen attributes

These include standard attributes of the user that get captured during a conversation. These attributes are the same for every ChatGen client. They include:


Name

Email

Mobile number

Location 


Custom attributes

These are the attributes that companies can add themselves, based on the kind of user information that they want to capture. Examples include: 


Company Name

Designation

Age

Work location

Satisfaction rating


It’s up to the company to define the customer attributes as per the nature of their business and its requirements. 



Both ChatGen attributes and Custom attributes are available on the right-hand side of the Conversation window as part of the user profile. 


Adding Custom attributes

Go to the Leads icon on the left-hand side of the ChatGen page:



Click on the Settings tab (top-right) and then click Create New Attribute 



Choose an attribute type based on the information you’re collecting. For instance, the date of birth would be “date”, Salary would be “number”, and so on. 



Choose the attribute name. This is how the custom attribute name will appear in the user profile (eg. Salary, Date of Birth, etc). 



Make sure you tick the checkbox next to the attribute (see image below) and then click “Save Changes” (top right)



Both agents and admins can create Custom Attributes. 


Collecting Custom attributes from the user

You have saved the custom attribute in the system, but you need to collect the information from the user. There are two ways to do this. 


Option 1 — As part of a chatbot flow

You can collect a custom attribute as part of a regular chatbot flow that you create on ChatGen. 


  1. Go to the Dialog icon on the left-hand side 



  1. Create New Dialog (top right corner) or click on an existing dialog



  1. Add a question as part of this dialog flow. This question should be directly related to the user information you want to capture. For instance, if you want to capture the user’s Salary ask “What is your salary?” 



Once you’ve saved the question, go to the settings icon on the top right corner and click on Attribute Mapping.



Tick the checkbox that asks if you want to map the question to an attribute and add the name of the attribute— in this case, ‘Salary’. 



When the user goes through the flow and answers this question, the response will automatically be saved as a Custom Attribute — Salary. 


Apart from mapping an attribute to a simple question type, you can also map it to a “Rating” or a “Carousel” type. 



Option 1 — Manually entered by the agent

The Custom Attributes also appear in the Conversation Window on the right side when the agent is chatting with a user. If the agent happens to get any information related to any of the Custom Attributes during the conversation, they can always add this information directly. 



Note that even when the information has already been entered by the customer through a chatbot flow, the agent can always manually edit that information if required.