Creating an Autoresponse

Sending content to a customer automatically is a critical functionality in a contact centre - the applications are as broad as your imagination! Common examples include:

  • Setting expectations with a customer via email i.e. ‘We’re looking into this. We’ll be in touch in the next 24 hours.'

  • Build a chatbot journey to handle simple FAQs, or carry out security checks before assigning to an agent.

  • Sending in-chat prompts and signposting i.e. ‘As we haven’t heard from you in the last 5 minutes, the chat will be closed shortly. Please reply to keep the chat open.'

This article will focus on the sending of a simple autoresponse - if you’re interested in the ‘bigger picture' of creating a chatbot journey, check our template library or get in touch!

Getting started

First, head to the builder in your domain. Create a new action with the ‘+' button on the map, then select ‘Send Autoresponse’.

You’ll be adding the main body of your autoresponse into the ‘Message’ editor. Full text editing including HTML links and formatting can be done from here.

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Add a new ‘Send Autoresponse’ action

Adding images to an email

If you’re sending an email autoresponse, you can add images into the body of your email. To do so, you’ll first need to upload it or select it from your existing files. Then, you can use the image-20240517-093457.png next your image to insert it into the body of your message. This will display as a shortcode, a bit like this: {{image:supersecret.jpg}}. When the email sends, this shortcode will be exchanged your image.

Images must be inserted into the body of the email - they won’t be sent as a separate attachment to avoid spam filtering issues.

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Select and insert an image into your email body

For a list of image types we support, check this article.

Top Tip: You can also insert images using the image-20240517-093648.png in Message editor once you’ve uploaded them - this will paste the image shortcode into wherever your cursor is in the editor, instead of just at the end of your message.

Adding Contextual Data

This is where you can really personalise your automated responses. Using the image-20240517-093457.png in the Message editor, you can insert a piece of data Gnatta has collected from the conversation, person, interaction and more. Common use cases might include:

  • Using {{person.email.name}} to insert the customer's name in your greeting

  • Using {{person.email.address}} to insert the customer's email address

  • etc.

When the autoresponse is sent, it will replace the shortcode with the actual data. If Gnatta doesn’t have a value for the context you’re trying to use, it will replace with a blank space. So if you didn’t have the customer’s name stored, it would simply show ‘Hi’.

There are lots and lots of contexts you can use to hyperpersonalise your customer’s journey. For more information on how contextual data works, take a look at this: Contextual Data

What About Quick Replies?

In some channels (Gnatta Chat, Facebook and Instagram) you can attach a ‘quick reply’ button to your message. This is critical functionality for building chatbot journeys. Quick replies are a whole topic on their own - we’ve covered it in detail in this article.