Testing Your Bot Before You Launch

Testing Your Bot Before You Launch

Before your chatbot greets real customers, spend five minutes chatting with it yourself. Testing is the single easiest way to catch problems before anyone else sees them — and WRRK makes it a one-click job.

The fastest way to test: the Test Bot preview

1. Go to Chatbots in the left sidebar and click your bot.
2. On the bot's dashboard, click the Test Bot button (top-right).
3. A live chat panel slides in from the side. This is your actual widget — the same one visitors will use.
4. Type a question and press enter, just like a visitor would.

Note: the Test Bot preview needs your bot to be published (active). If you see "Publish this bot to preview it live," click Activate (or Get embed code / Publish to embed) on the dashboard first, then try again.

What to actually check

Don't just say "hi" and call it done. Run through this quick checklist:

1. Real questions. Ask 5–8 questions your customers genuinely ask — pricing, hours, "how do I…", "do you offer…". These are the moments that matter.
2. Correct answers. Are the facts right? A confident wrong answer is worse than "I'm not sure." If it's wrong, the fix is almost always more knowledge — head to the Knowledge tab. See Training Your Chatbot.
3. The "I don't know" case. Ask something it shouldn't know. Does it fall back gracefully (using your fallback message) instead of making something up?
4. Tone. Does it sound the way you want — friendly, professional, casual? Adjust in the Persona tab. See Setting Your Bot's Personality & Tone.
5. Look and feel. Right colors, avatar, and greeting? Fix in the Appearance tab. See Customizing How Your Widget Looks.
6. The email gate (if you turned it on). If you enabled Require Email Before Chat, confirm the bot asks for an email first — then type a valid one like test@example.com and confirm it unlocks and answers. See Guardrails.
7. Handoff. Try a phrase like "I want to speak to a human" or one of your keyword triggers, and confirm it offers to bring in a person.

Test the way your customers will talk

Real people are messy. Try to break it a little (kindly):

• Typos and lowercase: whats ur pricing
• Very short messages: refund?
• Two questions at once: Do you ship to Canada and how long does it take?
• Something off-topic to check your Blocked Topics work.

If any of these produce a weird answer, that's a great find — better you than a customer.

Iterate: change → test → change again

Testing isn't one-and-done. The loop is simple:

1. Chat with the bot and note what's off.
2. Make one change (add knowledge, tweak tone, adjust a guardrail).
3. Re-open the Test Bot preview and try the same question again.
4. Repeat until it feels right.

Changing one thing at a time makes it easy to see what actually helped.

Test on your real website too

The Test Bot preview is great, but once you've embedded the widget (see Installing & Embedding Your Chatbot), open your live site and try it there as well. This confirms:

• The bubble appears in the right corner.
• It shows on the pages you expect.
• Nothing on your site overlaps or hides it.
• Your Allowed domains setting (if you set one) isn't accidentally blocking your own site.

After you launch: keep watching

Testing doesn't stop at launch. Real conversations are your best feedback:

• Check the Inbox to read real chats and see where the bot struggled. See Managing Chatbot Conversations in the Inbox.
• Check Analytics for common questions and handoff rates. See Understanding Your Chatbot Analytics.
• Every week or two, add knowledge for the questions it missed. A bot that's tuned from real chats gets noticeably better fast.

If something's not working

If replies are wrong, empty, or the widget won't load, see Chatbot FAQ & Troubleshooting.

Quick recap

1. Click Test Bot on your bot's dashboard.
2. Ask real, messy questions.
3. Check facts, tone, look, email gate, and handoff.
4. Change one thing, re-test.
5. Test on your live site, then keep learning from the Inbox.

Five minutes of testing now saves a lot of awkward customer moments later.