Most customers do not start a conversation on your website. They message you on WhatsApp from a bus stop, reply to an Instagram story, or open your Facebook Page at eleven at night. For many businesses, especially in Southeast Asia, the messaging app is the storefront.
The usual answer is a separate bot for each platform. Each has its own setup and its own copy of your answers, and over time they quietly disagree with each other. Gydr 3.0 takes a different approach.
A channel is a new door, not a new assistant
From the new Channels page you connect WhatsApp Business, Facebook Messenger, Instagram or Telegram, and attach it to a widget. That widget starts answering there straight away, with the same knowledge, the same skills and the same personality. Nothing is set up twice, because a channel is a new way to reach the assistant you already built, not a second one to maintain. Your website chat becomes one channel among several.
Connecting is guided. For WhatsApp Business, Messenger and Instagram you sign in with Facebook and choose your account instead of copying credentials by hand. Telegram connects with your bot token and registers itself. Your credentials are checked with the platform before the channel is saved, so a wrong token fails at connect time, not silently at your first customer's message.
Speaking each platform's language
Every platform has its own vocabulary of buttons, quick replies, lists, images and locations, and its own hard limits on each. Your assistant's answer is shaped into that vocabulary, within those limits. Answers are sized to fit, so a long reply is never silently cut in half.
Forms change shape too. A messaging app cannot show a web form, so on a channel your assistant asks one question at a time, in the thread. A tapped button counts as a real answer, and each answer is saved as it arrives, so a long set of questions is never lost halfway.
When a person needs to step in
When a customer on a messaging channel asks for a person, the conversation transfers to your team just as it does on your website. Your agent's availability is checked first, the customer is told what is happening, and the assistant steps aside until your agent closes the conversation.
Messaging platforms only let a business reply for a limited time after the customer's last message. If your agent answers after that window has closed, the reply is held for up to 72 hours and delivered the moment the customer writes back. Your team is told when a reply is held, when it is delivered and when it expires. Nothing your team writes is lost.
Knowing when something breaks
Connections expire and platforms revoke access. Every channel's credentials are now checked daily. If a connection dies, you are alerted, and the Console shows the platform's real status next to the channel. Instagram connections are refreshed before they expire. Turns that a dead channel could never deliver are not billed.
One inbox, one dashboard
Because every channel answers through the same widget, every conversation lands in the same list as your website chats, filterable by platform. The dashboard reports per channel, so you can see where customers actually reach you. You can also set your business timezone once, so "yesterday" in your charts means your yesterday.
Why we built it this way
We believe a channel is a delivery problem, not an intelligence problem. The thinking — what your business knows, what it may say, when to bring in a person — should live in one place. Each channel is a careful translation of that thinking into a platform's own rules. That is how a business keeps one standard of service whether a customer writes on WhatsApp or on its website.
Gydr 3.0 is the largest release we had shipped at the time. It also brought the whole chat window into fifty languages, which we wrote about separately. The full list of changes is in the 3.0.0 release notes.
Frequently asked questions
Which messaging apps can a Gydr chatbot answer on?
WhatsApp Business, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and Telegram, as well as your website. TikTok is listed as coming soon.
Do I need a separate chatbot for each messaging app?
No. A channel attaches to a widget you have already built, so it answers with the same knowledge, skills and personality everywhere.
What happens when an agent replies after the messaging window has closed?
The reply is held for up to 72 hours and delivered the moment the customer writes back, and your team is told when it is held, delivered or expired.