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:

  1. Prerequisites
  2. Connect your Instagram business account with Freshchat
  3. Allow access to messages on your phone device
  4. Connect your Instagram Business account with Freshchat  
  5. Configure additional settings for your Instagram pages
  6. Manage Instagram comments on Conversation Inbox
  7. Message types supported on Instagram

Prerequisites

Before you proceed, ensure that you meet the following requirements:


Connect your Instagram business account with Freshchat

  1. Log in to your Facebook account and go to Facebook Page Settings.
  2. Select Linked Accounts.
  3. Click Connect Account.
  4. 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  

  1. Log in to your Freschat account.
  2. Go to Admin Settings > Channels > Instagram DM.
  3. Click Start setup.
  4. You will be redirected to your Facebook account. If you are already logged into your account, you can continue using the same. 
  5. 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.
  6. Choose the Business Pages (linked to the Instagram Business account) you want to connect with your Freshchat account and click Continue.
  7. Select the Instagram account you want to connect to and click Continue.
  8. Review the permissions required and click Continue
  9. 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:

  1. On the Instagram DM page, click on the Configure button next to the page you want to configure.
  2. 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.


With bots, you can provide personalized solutions to your customers, enhance self-service by answering the most frequently asked questions without agent intervention, and relieve your agents from answering repetitive customer queries. For more details, see How to build a simple bot flow with the bot builder.

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''.


For details on creating and assigning groups, see Organizing your team using agent groups.

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. 


With the threading logic, you can decide if a new conversation should be created based on the incoming customer message. Based on the interval, you can either continue from the last conversation or start a new conversation. For more details, see Threading logic.

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.

Message Type

Direction

Supported on Instagram DM ?

Text

User to agent

Yes

User to bot

Yes

Agent to user

Yes

Bot to user

Yes

Image

User to agent 

Yes

User to bot

Yes

Agent to user

Yes

Bot to user

Yes

Video

User to agent

Yes

User to bot

Yes

Agent to user

Yes

Bot to user

via public URL

Audio

User to agent

Yes

User to bot

Yes

Agent to user

via

App

Bot to user

No

File

User to agent

NA

User to bot

Yes

Agent to user

NA

Bot to user

Coming soon

Emoji

User to agent

Yes

User to bot

Yes

Agent to user

Yes

Bot to user

Yes

GIFs

User to agent

Yes

User to bot

Yes

Agent to user

No

Bot to user

No

Stickers

User to agent

As image

User to bot

As image

Agent to user

No

Bot to user

NA

Automation

Bots

Yes

Structured messages

Articles

Bot to user

Coming soon

Carousels

Bot to user

Yes

Buttons

Bot to user

Yes

Dropdown list

Bot to user

NA

Message events

Delivered

User to agent

No

Agent to user

NA

Read

User to agent

No

Agent to user

Yes

Typing

User to agent

NA

Agent to user

NA

Consumer profile

User name

Yes

User image

Coming soon


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. 


Learn More:

  1. How to build a simple bot flow with the bot builder
  2. Assignment Rules