How to collect WhatsApp numbers from Instagram automatically?

Introduction

Does your business get a lot of leads from your Instagram account? Do you want to centralise everything into one communication channel? No worries, we are here to help!

The Wati number collection bot will chat with your Instagram customers and automatically ask for their phone number. Once collected, the phone number will be automatically saved into the customer's contact attributes. Afterwards, you can easily start a WhatsApp conversation with your customer that came in through your Instagram channel.

The number collection feature via AI Agent is available on the Pro and Business plans only.

How does it work?

Our number collection feature is powered by an AI Agent. It will handle the conversation on your behalf. This Agent is available in our Chatbot builder.

Let's look at an example chatbot flow below on how we can automate the process of collect phone number from IG contacts:

  • Start off by adding the AI Agent node in your chatbot builder. This will act as the number collection bot.
  • This number collection bot will focus on 1 objective while chatting with your contact, which is to collect their WA number. You don't have to worry about the back-and-forth messages, the bot will respond on its own
  • If the Agent is successful, you can add additional nodes to the overall chatbot flow, such as a Thank you message
  • If the Agent is not successful, you can assign the chat to a team or to a human operator for follow-ups

Let's take a closer look at the AI Agent node:

- The AI agent has one objective only, to help you talk to your contacts and ask for their phone numbers

- If your contact is not comfortable sharing, you can set how many times the Agent should try to convince your contact. The Agent can try up to 3 times.

- Once the number is collected, the phone number will be saved into the customer's Contact Attributes automatically, so you can use it later on for WhatsApp broadcasts. Optionally, you can also save the number as a Flow variable, if you need to use it within the same chatbot session.

How do you trigger this bot?

Similar to how you might trigger a Welcome message or Out of Office message for Instagram, you can use our Rules feature to trigger your number collection bot.

After creating your chatbot, you will be able to select it within the Action block of your Rule.

For Filter properties, we recommend using 2 conditions:

- Contact initiates a new chat

- Contact does not exist

When these conditions are met, the number collection bot will talk to your brand new leads and ask for their WhatsApp numbers. If you'd like to start a bot for existing contacts, you can adjust the filter accordingly to suit your business needs, too.

If you have multiple Instagram Rules active, please make sure the Filters are unique for each rule, otherwise you might trigger 2 Rules at the same time. This may cause confusion for your customers.

Once your Rule setup is done, switch on the Rule and you are good to go! Sit back and let AI do the heavy lifting for you. You can check the Contacts page or the individual contact in Team Inbox for any new WhatsApp numbers collected over time.

How did we do?

New Triggers, Filters and Actions available for Instagram Automation

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