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How to send an automatic SMS using Call Flow Designer
How to send an automatic SMS using Call Flow Designer

A guide to automating the sending of SMSes via CFD in CloudTalk's Dashboard

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Written by Tom Grant
Updated over a week ago

There are some situations in which you may want to send an automatic SMS to your customers via either the unanswered or answered branch of your Call Flow Designer (from here on referred to as CFD). For example, if your customer is unable to reach an agent (e.g full queue or no available agent) and therefore will be sent down the unanswered branch of your call flow, you may wish to send them an SMS with some advice regarding their call.

The following article will detail how to set up your CFD for the example scenario above, we will automate the sending of an SMS to any caller that was not connected to an agent.

Before we get started, make sure you have the following setup in order to use this functionality:

  • An Essential package or higher

  • An SMS enabled number

Not sure if you have the right setup to use automatic SMS? Contact our Support Team!


The preferred context for this setup would be as a solution to a scenario whereby only the particular information present in your CFD is necessary to determine if a follow-up SMS should or should not be sent to the customer.

This setup also specifically applies to inbound calls only, with this being the most common use. In the case that no CFD specific data is necessary to determine the sending of an SMS, it is possible to implement a similar setup with more flexibility within Workflow Automation. For this, please refer to our guides on Workflow Automations, linked at the bottom of this page.

Adjusting your CFD

  1. In your CloudTalk Dashboard navigate to the Numbers tab and click Edit on the number you would like to set up your follow up SMS for

  2. Make sure your call flow is set up as desired

  3. At the point where you would like to execute the automatic sending of your SMS, click on the + icon and choose the action HTTP Request

Configuring your HTTP Request

Note- when following this guide make sure to:

  • Be wary of the capitalisation of letters (“Authorization” needs to be with capital A, “recipient” needs to be with lower “r”)

  • Remember to leave out the "quote marks" when copying strings

  1. Configure your HTTP Request action according to our Send SMS Cloudtalk API documentation:

    1. METHOD - POST

    2. Request headers (see screenshot below)

      • 1:

        • Key: “Authorization”

        • Value: Basic Auth Hash (created from a combination of the ACCESS KEY ID and ACCESS KEY SECRET in CloudTalk).

Request body

  • Configure recipient

    • Key: recipient

    • Value: in most cases, we would use variable* (= dynamic value) such as {{call.external_number}}

  • Configure message to be sent

    • Key: message

    • Value: the content of message we want to send: “We are excited to meet you!“ etc

  • Configure sender number

    • Key: sender

    • Value: phone number we want to use to send the SMS from

      • can be a different number than the one related to CFD which is being set up

      • needs to be an SMS capable number and a registered CloudTalk number; with “+“ present) e.g +1 973 536 2330

Limitations

As sending an SMS is a request using CloudTalk's API, the usual rate limit applies (60 requests per minute).


If you have any further questions regarding this topic, or need assistance with anything else, please reach out to our Support team. We are always happy to help!

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