Freshchat allows you to connect your Instagram Business account and enables you to seamlessly engage with your customers. You can send and receive Instagram messages and respond to stories, and comments directly on Freshchat. Additionally, deploy bots to manage customer queries.
A few benefits of having the Instgram integration:
- Enjoy a hassle-free experience with no additional app downloads or integrations
- Be available for your customers on their channel of choice and provide conversational support experiences
- Improve productivity by empowering your agents to reply with context
- Deploy bots and automate replies to support round-the-clock
This article contains:
Prerequisites
Before you proceed, ensure that you meet the following requirements:
- You have an active Instagram business account linked to a Facebook page
- You have administrator privileges for both Instagram and the Facebook accounts
- Allow access to manage messages over API
Connect your Instagram business account with Freshchat
- Log in to your Facebook account and go to Facebook Page Settings.
- Select Linked Accounts.
- Click Connect Account.
- If you connected your Facebook Business page from the Instagram mobile app, disconnect and reconnect from the Facebook Business page.
Allow access to messages on your phone device
To manage Instagram messages via API, enable the Connected Tools option to allow access to messages.
Check out the video below to understand how to integrate your Instagram account with Chat.
Connect your Instagram Business account with Freshchat
- Log in to your Freschat account.
- Go to Admin Settings > Channels > Instagram DM.
- Click Start setup.
- You will be redirected to your Facebook account. If you are already logged into your account, you can continue using the same.
- Select the Instagram Business accounts you want to connect with Freshchat and click Continue. You can select up to 50 accounts.
Note: The Instagram Business account must have a Facebook page connected to it.
- Choose the Business Pages (linked to the Instagram Business account) you want to connect with your Freshchat account and click Continue.
- Select the Instagram account you want to connect to and click Continue.
- Review the permissions required and click Continue.
- On successful completion, you can see your Instagram DM connected to your account.
Configure Freshworks as the primary receiver
Once you complete the Instagram setup, check if Freshworks is the primary receiver for your Instagram messages on Facebook page.
To do this, go to Facebook Page Settings > Advanced Messaging -> Handover Protocol > Instagram Receiver.
Configure additional settings for your Instagram pages
Once you successfully connect your Instagram pages, you can configure different settings to enhance your customer interactions on Instagram.
To configure settings:
- On the Instagram DM page, click on the Configure button next to the page you want to configure.
- You can see the different configuration settings you can enable/disable for your WhatsApp Business Account.
Configuration Settings
Setting | Description |
| Topic Name | Add a channel name to easily manage assignments and reporting. |
| Deflection (Trigger a bot) | Create a bot on Freshchat and enable this option to trigger the bot on your Instagram page within or outside your business hours, or both and effectively manage customer conversations.
|
| Chat Assignment (Assign Group) | Enable this option to route all your Instagram page conversations to specific groups in your account. For example, you can route all conversations related to orders to the “Procurement Team''.
|
| Resolution (Send CSAT surveys) | Enable this option to automatically trigger surveys to customers after a conversation is resolved. For more details, see CSAT surveys. |
| Threading interval | Enter the time interval after which you want to start a new conversation thread on Instagram with customers. You can set the interval in days, hours, and minutes.
|
Advanced Configurations | |
| Assignment Rules | Automatically assign conversations to agents based on predefined rules, events, filters and keywords. For example, you may have multiple support teams distributed across different regions or have different support teams to handle specific queries. With Assignment Rules, you can redirect your customer to the right team. For more details, see Assignment Rules. |
| Advanced Automations | Create automation workflows to automate and simplify daily tasks and enable agents to quickly finish repetitive tasks. |
Manage Instagram comments on Conversation Inbox
Once you successfully integrate and connect your Instagram account, you can view all the comments from your Instagram pages directly on the Freshchat Inbox and easily manage the conversations via Direct Messages (DM).
Reply Window
Every comment on an Instagram post initiates a new conversation in Freshchat and appears as a speech bubble in the Conversation Inbox.
As an agent, you can respond to customers' comments directly within the speech bubble using the Reply as a comment option. You can also view the caption and image used in the post, and access the post directly on Instagram.
Note: Agents can respond to messages for up to seven days from the last message from the customer. The seven-day reply window is refreshed each time a user responds to a business via direct message.
Message types supported on Instagram
Check out the list of message types supported on Facebook Messenger. You can also see how each message type appears on the Inbox.
Instagram-specific message types supported:
You can see how each message type is displayed for Instagram-specific messages on your Inbox.
Message & comments on a post: Get notified about direct messages and comments on your post
Get notified about story replies and story mentions
Attach images, and send emojis to your responses.
