Chatbots often use prompts to gather information from users during a conversation.
It's important to note that once a prompt collects input, that information is tied to the user and the ongoing conversation. As a result, the same prompt won’t appear again within that interaction. This helps create a smoother user experience by preventing users from being asked for the same information multiple times.
An example could be a school chatbot, as shown below:
User: What time does school start?
Chatbot Prompt (collects school name):
Which school are you asking about?
User: Lincoln Elementary.
→ At this point, the chatbot stores “Lincoln Elementary” as a variable (e.g., school_name) for this user and conversation.
User: What time is pickup?
→ The chatbot doesn’t ask for the school name again, because it already knows the user is asking about Lincoln Elementary.
Chatbot Response:
Pickup at Lincoln Elementary is at 2:45 PM.
However, there may be times when you want to override this default behavior and ensure that a prompt is always shown during a conversation—even if the user has already provided the information.
An example could be a school chatbot that previously collected the parent’s phone number during the conversation. However, before submitting the registration form, it needs to confirm that the number is still accurate.
Chatbot:
Just to confirm—can I verify your contact number before we submit the registration?
User:
Sure.
Chatbot (re-prompting even though it already has the data):
Is your phone number still (555) 123-4567?
User:
Yes, that's correct.
(or)
No, please update it to (555) 987-6543.
First, let's look at the default behavior to see it in action. In this example you can see a dialog EnsureBotAsksQuestion with in Intent Trigger "OrderDetected".
The utterance order food, or something similar, will trigger this intent. When the intent is detected, the user is asked for their food order. The order is then echoed back to them.
You can see this here: