WhatsApp Connector Channel

Owned by XCALLY Knowledge (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Oct 17, 2024 by Product Knowledge
6 min read

The WhatsApp Connector Channel Section shows all the interactions managed by the Agents and coming from WhatsApp users. 

The WhatsApp Connector Channel allows you to define the WhatsApp Connector Accounts that the Agents, belonging to specific WhatsApp Connector Queues, will share and use to send and receive WhatsApp Connector messages in the standard XCALLY Motion Omni Desktop Interface.

The XCALLY Motion WhatsApp Connector Channel is based on Providers solutions, offering a WhatsApp for Business messaging system interface (N.B.: automated or bulk messaging are not allowed). 

Whatsapp Connector Benefits

The Customer and the Agent can exchange WhatsApp messages, reaping the following benefits:

  • the Customer can use one of the most popular messaging systems

  • the Agent interaction happens inside the XCALLY Motion common environment

  • the Agent can manage several types of interactions at the same time

  • the interaction content is shared, easily retrieved and managed

  • all the Customers information is stored in the Contacts Manager 

what to know (discover also Meta documentation at this link)

  • A message exchange session with the customer can last up to 24 hours (starting from the first message sent by the customer): after this time the customer service window expires. 

  • The agent can start a conversation and forward new messages to the customers only if you have a template authorized by Meta or Kaleyra. 

If your Agent Desktop is running on MAC with OS High Sierra and using the Browser Safari, remember to enable the audio notifications in Safari in order to receive an audio alert for all incoming interactions

Whenever the customers interact with the Contact Center using WhatsApp, all the Agents belonging to the specific WhatsApp Connector channel queue will receive a request on the Omni Desktop interface.

They can reject it and the request is passed to another Agent in the same queue (in this case WhatsAppConn1). 

The interaction starts when one agent accepts it: all the others will be notified that the interaction has already been taken by somebody else.

Whatsapp Connector session

Let's see how a typical WhatsApp Connector session looks like:

Customer’s Side

Agent’s Side

Customer’s Side

Agent’s Side

 

Moreover every interaction presents, on the right side of the screen, contextual information that the agent can use (during the session or after it) to manage the interaction/customer with these tabs:

You can explore documentation about that on this page

 

By sending an outbound message with a WhatsApp Meta or Kaleyra template, agent will see the sent message also with inserted buttons, image or video.

Moreover if in the campaign the option Close interaction with Quick Reply is active, when the customer answers with a quick reply, the interaction closes automatically (otherwise the agent can manage it during the customer service window)

 

Agents' message commands:

  1. Type field

  2. Emoticons

  3. Canned Answer

  4. File attachments: it’s possible to attach only a single file per message, whose size is up to 15 MB maximum (if enabled by the Admin in the Chat Website Settings)

  5. Voice Message

Explore here the supported media and size on WhatsApp: Media - Cloud API

The agent can also insert an internal note: explore here documentation about that

 

On the Agent's side, anytime a message is sent:

a single checkmark means that the system encountered a problem

a double checkmark means that the message has been delivered to the WhatsApp Connector recipient

Customers can send messages containing a geographic location with all the available providers for WhatsApp Connector (Kaleyra, Meta, Twilio and Sinch V2)

 

 

 

Closing the Whatsapp session

If the Agent closes the session clicking on the sign X in the session tab:

and confirms:

The interaction can be simply Closed or Closed & Disposed.  You can explore documentation about dispositions on this page.

Moreover, if the Transfer option is set by the administrator in the Website Settings, the Agent can also see this command in the menu of 3 dots  in order to redirect the Whatsapp interaction:

You can explore documentation about transfer on this page.

 

Whatsapp Interactions

The list of the interactions managed by the Agents will be available on the WhatsApp Connector Channel Interactions view:

The down/up arrows near the Last message field indicate if the last message was incoming or outgoing.

You can filter the interaction list by: Start Date, Read/Unread, Status (Open/Closed), Account, Agent (the first one who managed it), Tags (multiple choice).

Moreover you can search interactions by search button (click here for documentation) or you can use advanced search (click here to read relative documentation).

 

The interaction can be:

  • Open 

  • Closed (by an Agent)

 

If you see a small number near the contact name, like in the following picture:

it means that new interactions have been received (but not managed) in the same conversation.

  • Clicking on the Interaction row, the agent is able to see all the messages exchanged in the single session, as well as the right sidebar information (contact, interaction, customer journey as we have seen before).

  • Clicking on the three dots menu, the agent can apply the following commands to the selected interaction:

 

  • Show the interaction contents

  • Download a zip of the interaction (depending on Agent's permissions) with or without attachments

  • Close and (eventually) dispose the interaction

Remember that on Meta and Kaleyra, Customer Service window expires after 24h. For inbound interactions and outbound campaigns, when this window expires, agent can:

Sending a template by the agent

Recontact Template

When the Customer Service Window of 24h of outbound campaigns expires, on open interactions the agent can contact the customer by clicking on Send Recontact Template

In this way, the client will receive the recontact template configured on the Meta/Kaleyra account from sender System.
If the client replies to the message, the interaction will be managed as an inbound message.

Send Template to a single contact

Agents can send template also to a single contact, by choosing a template “available for agents”
When an agent click on “+” to create an interaction and insert the phone number to contact, the system checks if the phone number is associated to an existed contact:

 

You can choose a contact and select the desired template (you can also click on eye icon to see a preview)

 

By clicking on SEND the message is sent and a new conversation is opened

Scenarios:

  • If the contact exists and the customer service window is expired → the system shows the list of available templates for agent to send the message

  • it the contact doesn’t exist → the system shows the list of available templates for agent to send the message

  • If it exists and the customer service window is active → the agent can send a standard message from the text area

  • If it has a pending campaign, the system prevents sending a message

  • If it has an open interaction with an other agent, the system prevents sending a message