Multi-channel design - How to create 1 chatbot for WhatsApp, Messenger, and Web

One of the challenges that many companies face when starting with AI chatbots and conversational interfaces is the channel that they want to integrate with.

At Flow.ai, we encourage you to be there, where your customer wants you to be in a channel-agnostic way. Being channel agnostics means that you are focussing on the message and person that you want to deliver your message to and not thinking in channels.

To enable companies to design omnichannel experiences we’ve launched our channel-specific design.

Channel-Specific Design

Creating 1 chatbot to rule all channels sounds great, and it is, but… Each channel has its own advantages and disadvantages. Take WhatsApp for example, in Europe that is the most popular messaging channel which offers a lot of potential for customer interactions. On the other hand, WhatsApp does not support Cards, Carousels and buttons. For reference have a look at the pros and cons of a WhatsApp chatbot.

Those Rich UI elements like buttons, cards and carousels, can enhance the Customer Experience and are supported in Facebook Messenger and the Web Widget but not in WhatsApp. That means that if you’re using these elements, you should alter your workflow for WhatsApp. And there we go, our Channel Specific Design feature is here to help!

Create an omnichannel chatbot in 3 steps

1. Enable Channel Specific Design

After enabling Channel Specific Design in the Project settings you can start using the feature from within the Flows sections. So head over to Flows!

2. Create shared elements

Within the shared tab, you can only drag & drop elements that are supported by all your selected channels. In our example, text replies is one of the elements that is supported by WhatsApp, Messenger and Web so let’s drag and drop that onto our canvas.

3. Tailor to each channel specific

After creating shared elements, we can now start tailoring the elements to each channel. Let’s have a look at the Web Widget that supported rich UI elements such as cards and buttons.

As WhatsApp does not support these cards, buttons and carousels we can now easily alter the workflow with elements that are supported by WhatsApp such as text.

Test your Omnichannel chatbot

We know it’s exciting but don’t forget to test your experience properly. You can ask colleagues and friends to try it out on different channels. Try it out with WhatsApp Testing or share the Web Widget URL. After testing, improve your bot and repeat the process until it’s ready for a first launch!