Contact Us

If you still have questions or prefer to get help directly from an agent, please submit a request.
We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Please fill out the contact form below and we will reply as soon as possible.

  • Go to Haptik Website
  • Contact Us
  • Home
  • Bot Building
  • Whatsapp Bots

Steps to create a WhatsApp Bot

Written by Medha Anand

Updated on October 29th, 2021

Contact Us

If you still have questions or prefer to get help directly from an agent, please submit a request.
We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Please fill out the contact form below and we will reply as soon as possible.

  • Getting Started
    Build Deploy Analyse Manage Account Bot Deactivation
  • Bot Building
    Essentials Smart Skills Steps User Messages Bot Responses Entities Connections Customisations User feedback collection Testing Whatsapp Bots NLU Bot Maintenance
  • Smart Agent Chat
    Set up Admin Settings MyChats Section (Agent Inbox) Live Traffic Section Teams Section Archives Section Analytics Plans on Smart Agent Chat
  • Conversation Design
    Design Basics Design Guides Designing for Platforms Designing WhatsApp Bots
  • Developer Guides
    Code Step Integration Static Step Integration Shopify Integration SETU Integration Exotel Integration CIBIL integration Freshdesk KMS Integration PayU Integration Zendesk Guide Integration Twilio Integration Razorpay Integration LeadSquared Integration USU(Unymira) Integration Helo(VivaConnect) Integration Salesforce KMS Integration Stripe Integration PayPal Integration CleverTap Integration Fynd Integration HubSpot Integration Magento Integration WooCommerce Integration Microsoft Dynamics 365 Integration
  • Deployment
    Web SDK WhatsApp Facebook Instagram Sunshine Conversation LINE Google Business Messages Telegram MS Teams Bot as an API iOS SDK Android SDK
  • External Agent Tool Setup
    Zendesk Chat Salesforce Service Cloud Freshchat Zoho NICE CXOne Gorgias
  • Analytics & Reporting
    Intelligent Analytics
  • Notifications
    SMS Notifications Success Measurement
  • Commerce Plus
    Catalog Integration Bot Building Guide Channel Deployments Unified ML Pipeline Documentation
  • Troubleshooting Guides
    Error Messages FAQs
  • Release Notes
+ More

Table of Contents

Design the botBuild the bot on Haptik PlatformStage 1: Create a New BotStage 2: Create a Skill and Skill SetStage 3: Create StepsStage 4: Add User MessagesStage 5: Add Bot ResponsesStage 6: Add EntitiesStage 7: Create Connections

In this section, we will see how to begin the designing of a WhatsApp bot, how to build the bot on the Conversation Studio tool of Haptik Platform and how to deploy the bot so users can start sending messages to your business.

Design the bot

Well, when it comes to creating a WhatsApp IVA, the first and foremost consideration is design. There are a lot of UX considerations to keep in mind while designing an automated experience for WhatsApp.

Some tips to start with:

  • WhatsApp is a user-focused platform, users have the power to block or report a business number.
  • Start small: Start with the burning customer issues which can be resolved in a transactional manner with a quick resolution on WhatsApp. These use cases will help maintain a high-quality rating from the users
  • Design a conversational experience for the user. It’s WhatsApp, after all.
  • Enrich the customer experience by using media messages (photos, videos, etc.) to drive higher engagement
  • Ensure valid human escalation paths - Businesses without a valid human escalation path may become red in terms of quality rating and will see the phone number Status is Flagged. Valid escalation paths include human agent handoff in a thread, phone number, email, web support form, or prompting the user for an in-store visit

To start the Conversation Design process for the WhatsApp bot, please read here.

Build the bot on Haptik Platform

Stage 1: Create a New Bot

We will start by creating a new bot on the platform.

  1. Login to the Haptik platform, and start by creating your IVA. Click here to know more about building your bot.

Stage 2: Create a Skill and Skillset

After creating a new bot, create a new Skillset within the bot. Within the Skillset, create a new Skill. Every Skill handles one use case. To know more about Skill, click here.

Stage 3: Create Steps

Steps are the interlinked building blocks of a bot. Each step acts like a gatekeeper that detects user inputs, sends out appropriate responses, and directs users to the next step.

Steps are composed of several important sub-components, which house important pieces of information - User Messages, Bot Responses, Entities, and APIs.

To know more about Steps, click here.

Stage 4: Add User Messages

User Messages are the inputs from the user that the agent needs to interpret the user’s goal. It is important to add and train the bot with a variety of different sample user messages for each step, so that the bot can identify the correct intents and extract entities from the user utterance.

Whenever a user sends a message, we try to understand what the user is trying to say using various Machine Learning algorithms and find the corresponding step. One of the key modules which is used for step identification is the Intent Detection module.

To know more about adding user messages, click here.

Stage 5: Add Bot Responses

Bot Response is where a Step stores the replies that are sent in response to the user's message.

To know more about Bot Responses, click here.

Because of the platform limitations, many HSL elements from the Conversation Studio tool will not work on WhatsApp.

Here's the list of HSLs that are currently supported:

  • Raw Text/JSON
  • Image HSL
  • Quick Replies
  • Buttons

You can read more about Buttons and Lists here.

Any media type of file (image, video, or document) that you are sharing with the users, should be 10MB or less in size.

Stage 6: Add Entities

An entity represents values that are collected from the user in a conversation. Depending on the context of the conversation, the required response can either be a single value or a group of specific values.

On the WhatsApp bot, the majority of flows are menu-driven.

For example:

Therefore, on WhatsApp, we make use of the Words & Phrases entity. Words & Phrases is a dictionary entity, which is configured as follows -

image

As we want the user to select an option from the menu, we have created a dictionary entity, where the Words column represents the actual word that will get detected and in the Variants column we can add the different variations which users can type. If the user types 1, the bot captures the value as word, work, in this case.

For attachment type entities, WhatsApp can compress images and send compressed images to Haptik. Haptik stores the received image to S3.

You can fetch user's name and phone number from WhatsApp.
There are system entity that can fetch these values from the user's profile.
Use _completion_phone_number_ to fetch user's phone number and _username_ to fetch the user's profile name.

Add the entities on the first step of the bot and mark them as non-mandatory. Read here to know more about entities.

Stage 7: Create Connections

Connections represent the path a conversation takes from step to step. Depending on the response a user inputs to the bot, they traverse down a different connection to the appropriate next step. Bot builders must modify every connection they create to indicate which user inputs correspond to which steps.

On WhatsApp, we majorly use 2 types of connections -

  1. Connection using entity - We will use the entity detected from Stage 6, to create further connections. To know more about using entity values on connection, click here.
  2. Self Connecting Steps

When the bot breaks or if you are sending notifications to the user and want the user to start the conversation by clicking on the buttons present in the HSM, we make use of Self Connecting steps.

image

When the suer taps on the HSM button, they will always be directed to the start of the flow.

Self connecting steps also are helpful to restart the flow in case the bot breaks. You can ask the use to start the flow by typing Main Menu and it will again restart the flow from the start steps.

How to create a self-connecting step?

Create a Words & Phrases entity and add dictionary as shown below -


On the start step, go to the Connections tab and create a self-connection as shown below -

Click on the new arrow, and create the connection on the basis of Entity.

The feedback module does not work on the WhatsApp bot due to UI limitations.

Follow our Quality Assessment section to test the bot.

Once the bot is tested, we will deploy the bot on WhatsApp using Platform Deployment under Business Manager of Conversation Studio.

Was this article helpful?

Yes
No
Give feedback about this article

Related Articles

  • Introduction to WhatsApp Bots
  • FAQs on WhatsApp

Platform

  • Conversation Studio
  • Smart Skills
  • Advanced NLU
  • Intelligent Analytics
  • Omnichannel
  • Smart Agent Chat
  • Enterprise Security
  • Integrations

Solutions

  • Conversational Commerce
  • Lead Generation
  • Customer Care
  • WhatsApp
  • Conversational IVR
  • Google Business Messages

Industries

  • Retail/ E-Commerce
  • Financial Services
  • Travel & Hospitality
  • Telecom

Knowledge

  • ROI Calculator
  • Reports & Research
  • Case Studies
  • Webinars
  • ISAT
  • Tech Blog
  • Business Blog
  • Resources
  • Haptik v/s Yellow
  • Haptik v/s Liveperson
  • Haptik v/s IBM Watson
  • Haptik v/s Verloop
  • Conversations on AI

Company

  • Why Haptik
  • About Us
  • Careers
  • News & Media
  • Awards & Recognition
  • Contact Us
  • Partnerships
  • Investor Relations

Subscribe

Sign up to recieve the latest updates

Find us on

  • Twitter-footer
  • Linkedin-footer
  • YT-footer
  • Insta-footer
  • G2-footer
  • Facebook-footer

Knowledge Base Software powered by Helpjuice

Copyright © jio Haptik Technology Limited 2021 | Data Security & Privacy Policy | GDPR

North America | Asia Pacific | Africa | enterprise@haptik.ai

Definition by Author

0
0