Interactive messages help companies stay connected to their customers while delivering engaging and impactful experiences. While setting up bot or agent workflows, it is important to understand how the different message types are supported on different social channels.
To understand different message type of support on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram DM, Apple Messages for Business, SMS for Twilio, Web Widget, and Mobile SDK, please find the capability comparison below.
To understand message type support on other modern messaging channels like LINE, Google Business Messages, Telegram, and Viber, please click here.
Legend:
| Yes | Supported in Freshchat |
| No | Not supported in Freshchat |
| NA | Not available on the channel |
| Incoming | User to agent/bot |
| Outgoing | Agent/bot to user |
.
To understand different message type support on LINE, Google Business Messages, Telegram, and Viber, please find the capability comparison in the
below table
| Message type | Direction | LINE | Google Messages for Business | Telegram via marketplace | Viber via marketplace |
| Text | Incoming | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Outgoing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Image | Incoming | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Outgoing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Video | Incoming | Yes | NA | No | No |
| Outgoing | Yes | NA | No | No | |
| Audio | Incoming | Yes | NA | No | NA |
| Outgoing | via App | NA | No | NA | |
| File | Incoming | Yes | NA | No | No |
| Outgoing | No | NA | No | No | |
| Emoji | Incoming | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Outgoing | No | Yes | Yes | No | |
| GIFs | Incoming | As image | NA | No | No |
| Outgoing | Yes | NA | No | No | |
| Sticker | Incoming | No | NA | No | No |
| Outgoing | No | NA | No | No | |
| Automation | Bots | Yes | Yes | No | No |
Structured Messages | |||||
| Articles | Bot to user | No | No | No | No |
| Carousel | Bot to user | No | No | No | No |
| Buttons | Bot to user | No | No | No | No |
| Dropdown list | Bot to user | NA | NA | No | No |
| Message events | |||||
| Delivered | Incoming | NA | Yes | No | No |
| Outgoing | NA | No | No | No | |
| Read | Incoming | NA | No | No | NA |
| Outgoing | NA | NA | No | NA | |
| Typing | Incoming | NA | No | No | NA |
| Outgoing | NA | No | No | NA | |
| Consumer profile | |||||
| User name | Yes | Yes | No | No | |
| User image | No | NA | No | No | |
Once you've built your bots with the bot builder, you can choose between deploying your bots with the conversations widget or the self-service widget. Here is a comparison of the features that work with each widget.
| Features | Conversations widget | Self-service widget | Messaging channels (Facebook, WhatsApp, LINE, ABC) | Mobile SDK |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| API Calls | Supported | Supported | Supported | Supported |
| Articles | Supported | Supported | Not supported | Supported |
| Buttons | Supported | Supported | Not supported | Supported |
| Campaigns | Supported | Not supported | Not applicable | Supported |
| Carousels | Supported | Supported | Not supported | Not supported |
| Date and time picker | Not supported | Supported | Not applicable | Not supported |
| Dropdowns | Supported | Supported | Not supported | Supported |
| Flows | Supported | Supported | Supported | Supported |
| Files and video* | Supported | Supported | Not supported | Not supported |
| Images | Supported | Supported | Supported | Supported |
| Live chat | Supported | Supported | Supported | Supported |
| Rating | Not supported | Supported | Not applicable | Not supported |
| Text fields & URL inputs | Supported | Supported | Supported | Supported |
| Topics | Supported | Not supported | Not applicable | Supported |
| Typical response time | Supported | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported |
| Typing indicator | Supported | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported |
| Widget actions | Not supported | Supported | Not applicable | Not supported |
| Quick actions | Supported | Supported | Not supported | Not supported |
*While using the self-service widget, an agent can respond only with an image file. The widget can receive the following file types from the end user:
| File | File type |
| Image | JPEG, PNG |
| File | docx, doc, dot, wiz, rtf, txt, pdf |
Note: Features marked as not applicable are not technically supported in the respective channels. For example, the widget actions are not technically supported in messaging channels.
We shall start offering those features if they are available those channels.
We've built the self-service widget to make it easier for your customers to help themselves while sharing the necessary information with your chatbot. Some of Freshchat 's features built for facilitating conversations are unavailable with the self-service widget, such as push messages, FAQs, or Topics. We've noticed that these features are used to facilitate conversations as opposed to self-service. We've taken these features made for conversing with agents and packaged them into the Conversations widget.
When you use the conversations widget, you can offer the next level of customer service. You can lead your customer service with your bot and route the conversation to the right agent in your team to offer contextual, empathetic, and personalized responses. The conversations widget enables your customers to talk about their issues in their own words - enabling your agents to get the full context and speak human-to-human without being limited. You can use all the conversation-friendly features from Freshchat and might miss out on some of the chatbot-powered features that are part of the self-service widget.
Here's more info about each widget:
- A quick introduction to the conversations widget
- Customizing the conversations widget
- A quick introduction to the self-service widget
- Customizing the self-service widget