Build a bot

A bot answers the questions you get fifty times a day, collects details such as a name or a preferred slot, and hands the conversation to a person when it should. Bots live under Bots. Managers, admins and owners can build and publish them; everyone else can view them.

The steps you can use

What starts a bot

• Keyword: the message matches one of up to 20 keywords, exactly, at the start, or anywhere as a whole word. Case, punctuation and emoji are ignored, so "Fees?" matches fees.
• First message: the first message of a new conversation.
• Any message: a catch-all for anything no other bot picked up.
• Button reply: the customer tapped a quick-reply button on a template you sent.
• Click-to-WhatsApp ad: the customer arrived from one of your Meta ads (or from specific ads you list).

When several published bots match, the most specific trigger wins: ad, then button reply, then keyword, then first message, then any message. Between bots with the same kind of trigger, the higher priority wins.

Asking questions

• Answer types: text, number, email, phone, date or a choice.
• Choices show as up to three buttons (titles up to 20 characters) or a list of up to ten options. Each choice can lead to its own next step.
• Retries: if the answer doesn't fit, the bot asks again (twice by default) with your retry message, then follows the invalid path.
• Timeouts: set how long to wait, from a minute to seven days, with an optional reminder before it runs out, then follow the timeout path.
• Saving: each answer is stored as a variable for later steps, and can also be saved to a contact attribute.

Using answers and contact details in text

Thanks {{contact.first_name|there}}! We've booked {{answers.slot}} for {{answers.course}}.

You can use contact.name, contact.first_name, contact.phone, contact.email, any custom attribute as contact.<key>, saved answers as answers.<variable>, variables as vars.<variable>, and the customer's latest message as message.text. Text after | is the fallback.

Handing over to a person

A Hand off step assigns the conversation to a specific person, a team, or whoever your assignment rule picks, sends an optional message and ends the bot. Customers can also ask for a person at any point by sending a hand-off keyword as their whole message. The defaults are:

agent · human · talk to agent · talk to a human · talk to someone · customer care

Change or add keywords in the bot's settings, and choose the team that receives keyword hand-offs. If a bot hits repeated errors, it hands off too, so no customer is left talking to a broken bot. And if an agent assigns or claims the conversation, the bot steps aside.

Bots and the 24-hour window

Bot messages follow the same WhatsApp rule as your team: free-form messages only within 24 hours of the customer's last message. If a long delay outlasts the window, the bot waits at that step and continues when the customer writes again, or gives up after a day. Template messages always go. A question with no timeout expires after 24 hours of silence by default.

Test and publish

1. 01

   Build on the canvas

   Drag steps from the left and connect them. Your work saves automatically as a draft, and problems are pinned to the step they belong to.

2. 02

   Try it in the simulator

   Open the simulator and chat with the bot as a customer: type messages, tap buttons, skip ahead in time to test delays and timeouts, and give sample replies for API calls. The current step is highlighted. Nothing is sent to anyone.

3. 03

   Publish

   Publishing saves a numbered version and makes it live for new conversations. Conversations already in the bot finish on the version they started with.

4. 04

   Watch the numbers

   Each step shows how many conversations entered it, completed it and dropped off there, so you can see where customers give up.

• A bot can have up to 200 steps.
• A loop must pass through a question, a delay or an API call, so a bot can never spin on its own.
• Unpublish to switch a bot off; archive it to put it away, and restore it later as a draft.

API call step

Use it to look up an order, check a slot or create a lead in your own system. The address must use https and be reachable on the public internet. QuickSamvaad waits up to 10 seconds, then follows success (a 2xx reply) or failure. Map fields of the JSON reply, such as data.status, to variables. Each call carries an Idempotency-Key header, so your system can ignore an accidental repeat.

Bots in Hindi and Hinglish

Everything a bot sends is plain text, so write it in Hindi, English or Hinglish, as your customers do. A few tips:

• Add keywords in every form customers type: fees, फीस, fee kitni hai. Matching ignores case and punctuation in any script.
• Add Hindi hand-off keywords in the bot's settings, for example एजेंट, इंसान से बात or baat karni hai.
• Keep button titles short: the 20-character limit counts every Devanagari character, including vowel signs.
• Hindi opt-out words such as रोकें, बंद करो and band karo are already understood: they stop the bot and opt the contact out of marketing.
• A template used inside a bot must be approved in the language you send it in, for example hi for Hindi.

Common questions

My bot doesn't reply. What should I check?

Check that it is published, that its trigger matches what the customer sent, that the conversation isn't assigned to a person, and that a bot hasn't already handed it off. The simulator shows exactly which step runs.

Do bot messages cost money?

Replies inside the 24-hour window are service messages: the first 1,000 each month per number are free, then Meta charges its service rate. Templates a bot sends are charged by Meta like any other template.

Can a bot use AI to answer questions?

Not yet. Bots follow the steps you design. An AI agent is on our roadmap.