SMS

As Facebook Messenger policies get more strict and enforced, it’s important to maintain multiple communication channels in your chatbot. You’ve already learned how to use EMAIL block to send emails from your business domain, so let’s look into another asset – SMS texting.

Activechat is using Twilio SMS integration for sending text messages to mobile numbers. You can purchase phone numbers in multiple countries around the world and messaging costs are as low as $0.0075 per message.

For more details on setting up your Twilio SMS integration click here.

Once your Twilio account is connected, you can use the SMS block anywhere in your conversation flows. It works exactly like any other messaging block in Activechat.

SMS block editor

Please note that you can use attributes/variables anywhere in the SMS block editor – either for the recipient’s phone number or in the message text.

Phone numbers should be in international format (with country code).

Don’t forget to connect some error handling sequence to the ERROR exit to avoid displaying generic error messages to your chatbot users.

When customers respond to the messages sent by the bot, the system “default” event will be triggered in the chatbot and the default skill will be launched. You can use it to build two-way conversations between your bot and its users on SMS.