You can deploy your bots on WhatsApp and offer excellent customer service wherever your customers are.
- Before you begin, ensure you have integrated your Freshchat account with WhatsApp. Learn more about integrating WhatsApp with Freshchat here.
- Once you integrate Freshchat with your WhatsApp number, Freshchat creates a new Topic to handle all conversations from WhatsApp.
- Name this Topic (you can edit this later) by navigating to Admin Settings > Channels > WhatsApp > click the Edit button (of the number which you wish to edit) > Conversations > Topic to change the name.
- You can further edit the properties of the WhatsApp Topic by navigating to Admin Settings > Topics > the Topic you configured earlier for the WhatsApp integration.
- This will let you set up the Topic with more control to offer better customer service. On this page, you can trigger a bot with a 'Hello' or assign incoming conversations to a group.
How to build bots for WhatsApp
- Navigate to chatbots > Create a new bot > select WhatsApp as your channel.
- You can present the customers with a list of options (buttons, carousels, dropdowns, articles), each with a unique number — which customers can use to respond.
- WhatsApp only accepts text and strings as inputs. Therefore, please configure your bot with the Text field as the input type and Text as the field type.
Note: You will be able to select only those elements which are supported in Whatsapp.
- Freshchat also support WhatsApp's formatting options, such as asterisks before and after a word to make the font appear bold. For example, WhatsApp will render *Hello* world as Hello world on Whatsapp. You can also use emojis in your message with the rich text editor. Learn more about formatting on WhatsApp.
- You can also set up the slash command quick action for a bot you're setting up. Predefined buttons and widget menus can't be configured for WhatsApp bots.
- Once you've finished setting up the bot, Publish the bot and navigate to Deploy at the top right corner to deploy your bot.
Mapping a chatbot to a Topic
- Set up your bots with the bot builder, making sure to build specific bot flows for each Topic.
- To start using the conversations widget, finish setting up your bot flows, and navigate to Deploy > Deploy options > Messaging Channels > Save.
- Navigate to Admin > Topics.
- You will find a predefined topic that you must have already created. On this page, toggle the Trigger a bot and pick the bot you built with the specific flows designed for this Topic.
You can refer to this article to learn about channel/widget-specific input capabilities.
What will the customer experience be like?
- When the customer reaches out through WhatsApp, they will be greeted with the initial Hello message and a series of services available using the bot, each with a unique number.
- The customer will respond with the number associated with the option they need help with.
- You can configure the bot flow with conditions to route the user to the respective flow based on the customers' input. You can also configure a flow to prompt the customer if they give an invalid input.