How to build an Inbound Bot

How to build an Inbound Bot

Overview

An inbound bot collects the channel ID from which the contact's message is sent, and uses it to send messages back.

Once the customer's inbound message is received, to continue the conversation, you must necessarily use a Listening, or a Global Intents or an Entity gathering step: check the examples below for more information
For Webchat, the first step must be exclusively a Listening step or Information step.
Once the second response is received, the bot will guide the customer where they need to be based on the configuration you have set.

If, on the other hand, you don't need to continue the conversation, but simply show a message (e.g. We are closed) then an information step is more than enough.  

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.
  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
Once you've set up your bot, you can start building the flow of the incoming conversation. Check out the example below.


Example 1

In the example below, the customer sends an inbound message, after the initial check of the Logical Branch, the customer is prompted to provide a response (1 or 2). Once received, the Bot proceeds according to the configured path.
 



Example 2

In the example below, the customer message comes in, and before being passed to an agent the customer is asked to fill in a short survey. To build the short, we have first used Global Intents (Step 2), to understand first, if the customer is interested in filling out the short survey. In case the customer returns a positive intent (E.g. "Yes", "Absolutely", "Why not") they will be asked to provide a number from 1 to 5 to express their level of satisfaction. The Entity (Step 2 - Yes) can detects if the customer reply contains a numerical value or not and route the conversation accordingly. 

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Once your inbound Bot is ready, check here how to setup an Inbound Campaign and have your Bot running it.

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