Our quick start guide (sort of)

As with every new tool you are getting started with, the options and possibilities can quickly seem overwhelming at first. Multichat.ai is no exception, there are integrations, platforms, custom conversations, settings and a myriad of other configurations tailored to give you a swiss army knife feature set aimed to cover every different chat communication need you might ever have. However, we have kept a special focus on making the system easy to set up and get ready to be up and running in minutes. Let us show you how!

First you want to make sure that you are signed up and have an active account, let’s assume this is all set and done already. Here are the most important following steps grouped into four easy sections:

 

Where would you like to send messages?

• Pick your preferred platform(s) and connect multichat.ai to them. Whether you want to have a chat bubble on your home screen or have a chatbot replying to your customers reaching out on Facebook Messenger, your first trip on the multichat.ai admin interface should lead you to the Setup – General menu.  
• Even if you don’t need the Webchat at first, we recommend having it enabled as you can use it as a preview for testing your conversation flows within multichat.ai. This can be done by simply clicking on the Save button in the Setup – Webchat menu. 
• A handy tip: for Facebook Messenger we added a Create new page option making tests and experimenting really easy. This you will find in the Setup – General – Facebook section. The button will open up your Facebook account where you will be able to select to create a new page for a “Business or Brand”. It is important to give full access rights to multichat.ai and have admin permissions over the Facebook page you connect.
• For Viber users, the process starts with registering an account on: https://partners.viber.com  After this step, you will get access to Viber’s admin panel where you can create a bot account and copy the necessary Token to Setup – General – Viber.

How can you send them?

• IMPORTANT! Your bot is disabled by default when creating a new account. You can still set up conversations and change many settings but you won’t be able to test your conversations without enabling the bot. You can also do this while you are in the Setup – General menu and enabling it in advance saves a bit of a headache when searching for why your bot doesn’t reply.
• Now you are ready to start building your automatic conversation flows or Live Chat with your clients. 
• You can set up any number of custom conversations in the Automation menu but as a first step, please start with reviewing your Default Conversations. More specifically, you always want to start with the Welcome conversation as this is the very first message in the flow and this greets your users when getting in touch. This is the message that appears when a user interacts with your bot for the first time by tapping on the “Get started” button on Messenger, launches your bot for the first time on Viber or opens up the Webchat.

What would you like to send?

• There are multiple content types you can pick from and it is entirely up to you to design a chat experience that suits your needs the best but we generally recommend to have Text & Buttons as your starting section. This is where you would most typically place a friendly greeting for the chat users, this is where many of our users have their Privacy Policy so users can view it with a click of a button… etc. 
• You should think about these Conversations as building blocks so instead of having your entire flow in one big and long conversation, built in a single place, it is always preferred to use them as conversation elements that you can link together with so called Postbacks.
• You can create a Postback by clicking on Add new button in the above mentioned Text & Buttons content type, switch from External link to Postback and Choose a command right below it. This is where you can select the next conversation you would like to jump from here and this is how you can easily connect conversation elements to build a longer flow.
• Branching is used when there are multiple pathways for the user to take and Ask for input is your choice if you would like the user to type in his phone number or email address for example.

When would you like to send the messages?

• You will notice that the When to send section is already filled in for all the Default conversations but you have complete freedom at defining the user input you want to send an automatic reply to when creating a Custom conversation. The When to send is what your user says to you in the chat and the What to send is your reply to that. 
• Once you have all the required fields set, you can Start Testing the conversation in the preview section on the right hand side. 
• In addition to the automatic replies you can also send so called chat broadcast messages. This is what you use for targeted marketing campaigns, sending out newsletter type messages to your follower base, broadcasting a live event.. etc. Under the Broadcasting menu you can pick either Messenger or Viber and click on New Broadcast to create your message. Here you can use the very same content types as for the automated conversations. However, you will also find a detailed How to send section where you have advanced filtering options for the targeting and can also Schedule regular messages in advance.
• There is an essential additional option that we haven’t talked about. You can create a dedicated menu with quick options so your users can reach the most important points instantly. Under the Setup – Menu section, you can create a menu structure with additional submenus if needed.

 

The good news is you are all set and ready to roll now. Feel free to experiment with all the different options that multichat.ai offers. If this would be a simple Quick Start guide, it would quite possibly just end here but while you are here, we also wanted to introduce you to some of the more advanced concepts in multichat.ai and share a few useful tips to make a more immersive chat experience.

 

Live Chat

• One of the unique concepts in multichat.ai is the hybrid approach that can combine the chatbot based automatic replies with one on one Live Chat with human agents. This handover happens when the user gets to a so called “Help state”. There is a dedicated Postback called Start help process that you can assign to one of your menu buttons,  have it on a menu button in the conversation or tie it to a specific user input in the chat.
• We made sure that you can immediately see at multiple places on the UI if a user is waiting for one of your agents to jump into the conversation. There is a quick Reply button right on the Dashboard that takes to the Live Chat sections and also shows you the number of users waiting in line. 
• IMPORTANT! The bot, so the automatic replies get automatically turned off when a user is in the Help state. Please make sure to manually turn this back on once giving back the control to the chatbot. This you can do in the Live Chat messaging section under the individual user profiles or in the Fans menu as well.

eCommerce

• One of the many great things in multichat.ai is its built-in eCommerce integration that allows you to spice up the customer experience in your shop with tailored chat messages. There is a template for Abandoned Cart messages and Order Confirmations and you are free to create your custom messages as well.
• You can connect your Magento or Shopify shop under the Integrations menu but please note that the Magento process starts from your shop’s end, you will need to enable the connection in the System – Extensions – Integration menu within your Magento system: https://marketplace.magento.com/fanbot-ai-fanbot.html

Tags

• Last but definitely not least, you have an advanced tagging that you can use for segmenting the audience. Let’s say you are opening up a new shop in San Diego and you would like to push out an invite to all of your followers in the area who gave positive replies to certain questions in your onboarding flow. You can simply pick the location tag and add multiple extra defining options with ‘AND’ or ‘OR’ relation under the Broadcasting – Broadcast – How to send section and you can even use inverse tagging to filter out certain users.
• It is easy to see why they are incredibly useful, you can manage them under the Setup – Tags menu and you can add them to your Buttons and Postbacks in the Add new tag section in the New button menu so they are automatically added as the user goes along the conversation flow collecting valuable metadata about your followers.

You got stuck or simply have some additional questions? Please feel free to reach out to us at any time, we provide free consultation to all of our new users.