How to build an Inbound Bot

How to build an Inbound Bot

Overview

An inbound bot waits for a customer message, collects the channel ID from which the contact's message is sent and uses it to send messages back.
For the customer to receive a reply and initiate the conversation, their inbound message must be processed by a step that waits for a message input before moving to the next step. Ideally, this step should be a Listening step, a Global Intents step, or an Entity Gathering step. However, you can include other action steps before these, such as moving to a queue, setting a status, or implementing logical branching. Refer to the examples below for more details.
Warning
For Webchat, the first step must exclusively be a Listening step or an Information step.
Once the customer's message is received, the bot will guide them based on the flow configuration and rules you have defined.
If you don't need to continue the conversation but only want to display a message upon receiving an inbound message (e.g., 'We are closed'), an Information step will suffice.

Bot configuration

To build an Inbound Bot, navigate to Bots screen and click CREATE BOT.
  1. A unique Bot name.
  2. The channel you want your Bot to use. Please note once this is selected and save (CREATE BOT) it cannot be changed.
  3. Sender ID of the organization (Example: Phone Number) from where the Bot will be sent.
    1. Sender IDs are selectable within each Bot from the IDs available to your organization, before creating a Bot you will need to set the sender IDs from which the Bot will be sent. Sender IDs can be configured from Settings>Organizations.
    2. To get new Sender IDs assigned to your organization, please get in touch with support@webio.com
  4. The Sent To selection does not impact the functionality of an inbound bot. You can choose any option you prefer.

After setting up your bot configuration, you can begin designing the flow for incoming conversations. Refer to the examples below for guidance.
Once your inbound bot is ready, refer to this guide on how to set up an Inbound Campaign and have your bot running seamlessly.

Example 1

In the example below, a customer sends an inbound message. After the initial check using the Logical Branch, the customer is prompted to provide a response (1 or 2). Once the response is received, the bot follows the configured path accordingly. 



Example 2

In the example below, a customer message is received, and before being passed to an agent, the customer is asked to complete a short survey. To build this survey, we first used Global Intents (Step 2) to determine whether the customer is interested in participating. If the customer responds with a positive intent (e.g., 'Yes,' 'Absolutely,' 'Why not'), they are prompted to provide a number from 1 to 5 to indicate their level of satisfaction. The Entity (Step 2 - Yes) detects whether the customer's reply contains a numerical value and routes the conversation accordingly.




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