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Automate responses to customers when you’re offline
Automate responses to customers when you’re offline

Create an auto-responder using Custom Actions and Workflows to set expectations with your customers.

Eden avatar
Written by Eden
Updated over a week ago

Using Custom Actions, you can create automated responses to share with customers who match Workflows you have in place. With an auto-responder in place, you can set expectations with your customers during office hours or when you are offline. We’ll go through how to best set up your Custom Actions and Workflows to seamlessly automate replies and support your customers.


Setting up the Custom Action

Headers

When setting up your Custom Action, you will need to first update the headers being used for your request. The headers of the Custom Action should include the following content and use the same format as shown when looking at the API documentation for the Reply to a conversation endpoint:

An image showing Custom Action API Endpoint URL and HTTP Headers being set.

You will need to insert the dynamic attribute Conversation ID in place of <ID> in the endpoint URL.

Request body

For the Request Body, you will need to format the request using the same formatting that is shown in the REST API documentation for the Reply to a conversation endpoint:

An image showing Custom Action Request Body being set.

Testing

Once you have added your content to the Request Body, you can test our the Custom Action using a conversation in your workspace. Enter the conversation's ID in the Test value field and click the "Test" button.

An image showing a Custom Action being tested with a conversation ID test value.

If the test is successful, you will see the automated response appear in your your test conversation:

An image showing the conversation with comment added by the Custom Action.

From there, you can Save and set live your Custom Action.


Setting up the Workflow

After you’ve set up your Custom Action, you now need to create or edit an existing Workflow which uses the trigger Teammate has been unresponsive and add the Custom Action to your Workflow.

For example, Teammate has been unresponsive for '5 minutes' could be the trigger.

Then Apply rules to your Workflow path to use conditional branching.

Click + Add rule to define the conditions for when to send the Custom Action, such as:

  • IF - Team assigned is "Sales" and Outside "Default office hours"

  • THEN - Custom action "Auto-responder action"

Once you save and set your Workflow live, any conversations that match should trigger the Custom Action.


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