Note: Whatsapp integration is available from the Growth plan. Proactive messages on WhatsApp is available from the Pro plan.


Before you can use your WhatsApp message templates to reach out to your customers, you will need to learn more about getting started with WhatsApp message templates. We can use your WhatsApp message templates if you have already read that article.


You can refer to this set of WhatsApp Message Templates FAQs for more details.


TABLE OF CONTENTS


Different types of message templates


You can create three types of message templates as per your specific requirements:

  1. Text templates: These templates are built with just plain text messages.
  2. Rich media templates with attachments: These templates include images, documents, and videos as attachments.
  3. Call-to-action & Quick Replies templates: These are interactive templates with buttons for customers to interact with.


Creating WhatsApp message templates and getting them approved


Step 1: Creating and Managing your Message Templates in WhatsApp Business Manager

Please refer to this article to create and manage Message Templates in your WhatsApp Business Manager. Please follow the guidelines listed here while creating and managing your WhatsApp Business template. 


Step 2: Sending Proactive WhatsApp Messages

Building your API and sending the message template (Available only Pro plan onwards)

You can start setting up your API triggers to send templates using the outbound message API. Refer to our API documentation here for more capabilities. To access the API, generating an API token from your Freshchat account would be best. Learn how to generate an API token from Freshchat. There are three ways to send Message Templates when you use Freshchat APIs:

  1. Within your product/website code: Depending on how you've set up your website, you can directly call the API you have set up and send the Message Templates, as seen in the examples above.
  2. By using the API library in the Freshchat bot builder: You can configure the API action in the API library of the bot builder. Learn more about configuring API actions in the bot builder.
  3. With the WhatsApp Proactive Messaging custom app: With this app, your agents can send Message Templates to your customers directly from the agent inbox. Learn more about using the WhatsApp proactive messaging app.

Your customer experience with these messages is defined by how you set up your APIs. These include how variables are dynamically filled or what your agents see of this interaction. This is defined based on the attributes you use for your APIs. Please refer to our API documentation to learn more about setting up APIs.


Sending WhatsApp Campaigns: (Available from Growth plan onwards) 

CRM allows marketers to engage with their audience in real time. Marketers can use WhatsApp to manage and resolve queries from website visitors and leads and send transactional messages, reminders, and more directly from the CRM. Learn how to create a WhatsApp Campaign and configure WhatsApp Campaign in Journeys.


Your customer experience with these messages is defined by how you set up your APIs. These include how variables are dynamically filled or what your agents see of this interaction. This is defined based on the attributes you use for your APIs. To learn more about setting up APIs, please refer to our API documentation.


Offering context to your agents


You can even set up your APIs to help your agents with more context.  When you set up your API, the storage attribute can help your agents identify if your customers have replied to a Message Template or reached out on their own. Two values can be passed to the storage attribute:


  • "storage":"None"
    This will not reconstruct the Message Template but will show "Proactive message was sent to the user" in the conversation. This can be used if the customer is expected to share confidential information.

  • "storage":"conversation"
    This will reconstruct your Message Templates and applicable replies to help your agents with enough context in the agent view.

Customer view:


 


Reconstructed message in the agent view