Bot Introduction

What are Bots?

Bot is short for a web robot. Bots handle conversations for you – typically those that are simple and repetitive. Use bots to build automated workflows to save you time, help you sell more, collect valuable information, and provide great customer service. 

How Shout Uses Bots

Shout bots make it easy to build all kinds of automated messaging – for your customers and team. Here’s how:

• A bot will monitor your incoming messages, looking for special trigger words (e.g. Order, Help) 
• A bot will automatically respond to a message based on the trigger word
• A bot can collect valuable information and organize your account

Bots can gather contact information, categorize messages by topic, take orders, facilitate weekly team reporting and feedback, run promotions, and more!

Bot Types

There are two types of Shout bots:

• Conversation bots interact with contacts and perform actions based on the responses. Learn more
• Chain bots allow you to send information to Shout-to-Shout (S2S) contacts, advancing at their own pace with a Next button. Learn more

How to Run a Bot

When your bot is ready, there are several ways to start the bot:

• Share your trigger word for contacts to message to you
• From an open conversation, click the bot icon to run a bot

• From the contacts list, click the + icon and choose Run a Bot

• Use a recurring event to send the bot to a contact or list on a regular basis or at scheduled times
• Use bot actions in other bots to “Run a bot”. This will end the current bot and start the new bot
• Include your bot in a share link under Message actions to start the bot immediately when someone clicks your link 

Bot Details and Tracking

After you create a bot, you can view information about its performance – including a description, how many questions and segments it uses, who is in the middle of the bot, and who has completed it.

• Click Automations from the left navigation to reveal a dropdown menu
• Select Bots
• Click a bot to review
• Create a description of how and when you use the bot to stay organized
• Set the bot to Active or Paused, and review which services are enabled 
• Click Export Results at the top of the screen to download a CSV file with more details about your contact’s interactions with the campaign

You can see more details about contacts and questions:

• Contact in progress – contacts that have started but not yet finished the campaign
• Contacts finished – contacts have completed the campaign
• Individual messages – queued messages shows who will receive this message next, sent shows who has already received it

See how Wyatt saved thousands in a year by using Shout Bots here.