How to connect study faq knowledge base help to a chat wi…

Your study FAQ knowledge base is the set of documents that contain answers to common questions from trial participants, referring physicians, and site staff. Chatref connects this content to a website widget that appears on your clinical trial site or CRO portal.

Behind the scenes, Chatref ingests your uploaded PDFs, web pages, or plain text – protocol summaries, enrollment steps, compensation details, visit hours – and uses them as the only source for its replies. When a visitor opens the chat widget and asks a question, the platform searches your material and constructs an answer grounded in those exact FAQs. The widget does not access the open internet, so answers stay consistent with your study’s approved language.

For a full picture of how this works across trial sites and CROs, visit our Clinical Trial Sites & CROs page.

1. Gather your study FAQ content. Collect the files that contain the information your audiences ask for – enrollment criteria, visit schedules, reimbursements, informed consent process, contact details. Accepted formats: PDFs, URLs (your own web pages or study portals), or plain text.

2. Upload to Chatref. Inside the Chatref app, create a new AI agent. Add the files under the agent’s knowledge base. You can upload multiple files at once, and Chatref will read them all. There is no limit on the number of documents you can attach.

3. Configure the agent. Give your agent a name that makes sense for your team (e.g., “Study FAQs”). Optionally set a welcome message that matches your site’s tone, and choose a primary color for the widget bubble. There is no custom branding paywall – every account includes it.

4. Get the widget snippet. Once saved, Chatref generates a small piece of JavaScript code. Copy that snippet.

5. Place the snippet on your clinical trial site. Paste the code into the HTML of every page where you want the chat to appear, just before the closing </body> tag. Most website builders – WordPress, Squarespace, or a custom Webflow site – let you add custom scripts. If your site uses a CMS, add it to the global footer so it loads everywhere.

6. Test in the playground. Before going live, use the built-in playground inside Chatref to ask questions your participants would ask. Verify that the answers pull only from your uploaded study content. You can adjust the knowledge base at any time; the widget will use the updated material within seconds.

When you make the widget live, every visitor who clicks the chat bubble sees an agent that answers from your own study documents, not from a generic health FAQ.

A person visiting your trial recruitment page sees a small chat icon in the lower-right corner. Clicking it opens a message thread. The initial greeting appears, then the visitor can type a question.

Typical questions from participants might be:

• “Am I eligible for the trial if I take blood pressure medication?”
• “How often do I need to come to the site?”
• “Will I get paid for each visit?”

Chatref parses the question, scans your uploaded protocols and FAQs, and returns a concise answer. It cites the source if configured, and always stays within the scope of your study. If a question falls outside what your documents cover – for example, “What’s the weather today?” – the agent replies that it doesn’t have that information, rather than inventing a response.

Site staff or referring physicians asking about start-up documents or PI contact details get similarly grounded replies. The widget handles multiple conversations at once, so several visitors can ask questions simultaneously without overwhelming your coordinators. Any question that genuinely needs a person – a complex eligibility check, an adverse-event report – can be handed off to a human agent if you add that step, but the basic FAQ connection stands on its own.

The widget doesn’t appear on my site. Check that the JavaScript snippet is in the page source exactly as copied. It must be placed once per page, ideally just before </body>. If you’re using a tag manager or content blocker, ensure it isn’t stripping the script. Also confirm that the agent is published inside Chatref; an unpublished agent will not display.

Visitors ask a question and get a generic “I don’t know” response. Re-check the documents you uploaded. The answer might be missing, phrased differently, or not reachable. Try rephrasing the question in the playground. If the answer should exist, upload an additional document that covers it more directly. Chatref learns from all files, so adding a short plain-text summary of that specific topic can fix the gap.

Answers are outdated after a protocol amendment. Delete the old file from the agent’s knowledge base and upload the revised version. There’s no caching delay; the agent switches to the new content immediately. Always keep a single source of truth – avoid having both the old and new protocols in the library, which can cause contradictory answers.

The widget shows on some pages but not others. The snippet must be added to every page template where you want the chat. If your site uses a CMS, add it to the global footer template so it’s inherited across all pages. Also verify that no page-specific script restrictions block it.

Staff want to review conversations before they go live. Use the playground or set the agent to “draft” mode while testing. Only when you switch the status to “published” will the widget appear publicly. You can always view chats in the conversation inbox to monitor what visitors are asking.

What causes study faq knowledge base problems for Clinical Trial Sites & CROs?

Problems usually come from having FAQ documents that are incomplete, siloed across different systems, or written in a way that participants don’t phrase as search queries. When trial sites update protocols without removing old versions from the knowledge base, the AI agent can mix contradictory information. CROs managing multiple studies per portal may also inadvertently upload files that overlap, causing the agent to pull answers from the wrong protocol.

How do I improve study faq knowledge base for Clinical Trial Sites & CROs?

Keep one authoritative file per study topic and replace, don’t append, when something changes. Write the content in plain, natural language that mirrors how participants ask questions – use “How do I get reimbursed for travel?” instead of a header like “Reimbursement Procedure.” For CROs that manage a portfolio of trials, use a separate Chatref agent (or separate workspaces) for each study so answers never cross-contaminate. Then regularly review the conversations inbox to spot new questions and fill in the gaps.