Whatsapp for agents

Provide your customers with omnichannel experiences by connecting giosg with WhatsApp. This article covers Whatsapp specific features that compliment the basic chat related features in giosg.

Let your customers communicate in Whatsapp while allowing your agents to handle all customer connections through giosg. Through giosg agents can handle the following use cases:

• Inbound - The customer contacts you:
  The customer sends a WhatsApp message to a designated number or is directed to WhatsApp via an embedded link on the website. You respond to these inquiries through Giosg.

• Outbound - You contact the customer:
  You proactively initiate WhatsApp conversations with customers via giosg.

New conversations and messages

Unlike in Live chat, the customer can send a WhatsApp message even when all agents are offline. The conversation will remain waiting in giosg until agents are available again and one of them joins the conversation.

In WhatsApp conversations, the agent can see the username (linked to the customer's WhatsApp account) and the phone number (visitor_contact).

Notification about agent joining

When your company is having a Whatsapp conversation with a customer, the message sender for your messages is always the Whatsapp account itself (typically your company name). To provide a more personalized service, information about the agent handling the conversation is provided as an automatic message.

When an agent joins the conversation and sends their first message, giosg automatically sends a message like the one in the image above. If another agent joins the conversation later, a similar message is regenerated.

Image sending

In the Live 2.0 User interface, images sent by both the visitor and the agent are displayed directly within the conversation.

Customer care window: a Meta required policy

If an agent tries to contact a customer they have previously chatted with, but more than 24 hours have passed since the last message (the "customer care/service window"), WhatsApp requires the customer's consent to continue the conversation. When the customer consents to continuing the conversation, both parties can send messages as normal and carry on with the conversation. 

In case the last message in the conversation was sent > 24h ago and your agent wants to again connect with the customer, the process is as follows.

1. The agent sends a message to the customer in the conversation they have open with them in giosg.
2. The customer receives a "template message" asking for their consent to continue the conversation.
3. The agent is notified in giosg when the customer approves the continuation, allowing them to send a new message. The initial message (see step 1) is not delivered to the customer.
   
   

Outbound messages

Through the integration, you can get in touch with customers that have never contacted you through Whatsapp before .

First, the agent fills in the phone number in the giosg UI and starts the conversation. This is done by clicking on the purple + icon in the Start menu and then "Open interaction" and selecting the Whatsapp interaction that has been set up for you. 
 

A template message is sent to the customer, that asks them to accept the conversation with your company. When they accept, the conversation starts and both parties can send messages to each other.