Businesses looking to use whatsapp to connect to thousand of customers with agents or bots can now use Easyvoice platform along with WhatsApp cloud API, enabling both programmatic and manual communication for free.
What is Whatsapp Cloud API ?
There used to be times where businesses relied on BSPs (Business Service Providers) to get access to WhatsApp Business API. Facebook has now opened up WhatsApp to all businesses across the world with the launch of WhatsApp Cloud API. All you need to have is a Facebook (Meta) developer account, Meta developer app and mobile number to get started. Get started guide here
How to get Easyvoice chatbot for FREE with WhatsApp Cloud API ?
You’d need a platform like Easyvoice to create conversation bot to programmatically reply to customer queries and provide live chat support. Here’s the process to start with Easyvoice
Signup on Easyvoice — You can signup with the work email or Gmail account. Easyvoice has 3 section — Campaign, Chat, Automation & Integration as highlighted below
Automation
By default, you will be pre loaded with a simple WhatsApp welcome chatbot template. The user conversation starts with “Hi”, followed by WhatsApp bot reply messages.
Building the chatbot is super simple with Easyvoice, just click Build in the editor window and you’re done. Copy the WhatApp Webhook URL from the build log and paste in the Meta business app under whatsapp webhook section.
Chat
Once the mobile number is migrated to WhatsApp cloud API, you will lose access to the WhatsApp business and customer app. The entire conversation history is recorded in the Easyvoice platform and you can directly chat with the customer from the platform’s chat window.
You can bulk download the contacts with the variables used in the chatbot. Eg, If your capturing the email address as part of the conversation flow, then the downloaded file will have the email address along with customer WhatsApp number and name.
Integration
All you need is the permenant access token from Meta business app to get started with Easyvoice Chatbot. Here is the link to generate permenant access token from Meta.
To use chatbot, you only have to verify the phone number alone. Business verification and app reviews are not required to get started.
WhatsApp Pricing
Businesses are charged per conversation, which includes all messages delivered in a 24 hour session. The first 1,000 conversations each month are free.