Utterances are a list of sample phrases that the bot's user might say in order to invoke an intent. Within each intent, we add these utterances to help the bot map a user's request to the intent. These phrases help train the underlying machine learning model to make the bot smarter.
The smarter the model, the more effectively Lex will be able to match the phrase to an intent and the less likely it is you'll have to tell the user that you didn't understand the request. People coming from different backgrounds with different language characteristics and cultures will ask for things differently. It's good to add as many sample utterances as possible to cover the possibilities.
The following are some examples of sample utterances for our airline chatbot:
- Book a flight for Tuesday
- Check the balance of my air miles points
- Add bags to my flight booking
- Check for available flights to Wellington on March 17th
Slots can help extend utterances by creating variables that are populated by user inputs. We'll look at slots in the next subsection.