EXPERT INSIGHTS
Sep-17-2020
Khoros Staff
Editor's note: This blog post was originally written on the Flow.ai website. Flow.ai was acquired by Khoros in 2021 to advance Khoros' conversational AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities and data science expertise. This blog post has been adapted to be on the Khoros blog.
Using SMS text messages is easy to start a conversation with customers. Some use cases include: send a notification, like a delivery update, deflect a phone call to text messaging, and bulk sending a message to customers.
To get started you’ll need the following:
To start sending outbound messages you’ll need to connect Flow.ai with Khoros, configure the Flow.ai REST API and add a flow to trigger.
Using the REST API you can make a direct broadcast call to Flow.ai using a customer phone number (MSISN) that would trigger a specific flow.
That way you can send text messages to customers through the Khoros SMS integration.
We have everything ready to trigger a flow that will send an outbound message to a user. The only thing missing is a flow to trigger. Simply add a new flow and make it start with an event. For example name the event: Send SMS
.
Below the event, drag and drop a text reply. Add some text like: This is a test message
Save the flow. Now we can test the entire setup!
You can test the broadcast using a CURL command to make a call to the REST API.
The following is an example of a CURL command:
curl --location --request POST 'https://api.flow.ai/rest/v1/broadcast/instant' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: sk_ab12abcd9876543210abcdefgh012345' \
--data-raw '{
"audience": [{
"name": "John Doe",
"phoneNumber": "+1234567890"
}],
"channel": {
"channelName": "khoros",
"externalId": "+0987654321"
},
"payload": {
"type": "event",
"eventName": "Send SMS"
}
}
'
Replace the information:
Name | Description |
---|---|
API_TOKEN | Rest API token copied in step 2 |
CUSTOMER_NAME | Name of the customer (or anonymous ) |
CUSTOMER_MSISDN | Valid phone number in international format |
KHOROS_EXTERNAL_ID | Khoros external ID (phone number) |
EVENT_NAME | Event name of the flow to trigger |
curl --location --request POST 'https://api.flow.ai/rest/v1/broadcast/instant' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: API_TOKEN' \
--data-raw '{
"audience": [{
"name": "CUSTOMER_NAME",
"phoneNumber": "CUSTOMER_MSISDN"
}],
"channel": {
"channelName": "khoros",
"externalId": "KHOROS_EXTERNAL_ID"
},
"payload": {
"type": "event",
"eventName": "EVENT_NAME"
}
}
'