Get inbound customer info, what is that?
It's pretty simple: when someone calls your agent, it first checks if there is any info available about the customer. Once received (takes ~1 sec), it will pick up the phone.
How do I set this up?
First make sure you have a phone number connected to the agent. (Learn more). Then go to your agent and click on the Knowledge tab:
Scroll down to where you see this below:
So, you need a webhook. This is how the agent can get the info from your system or database. You can use anything that catches webhooks and returns data, but for this example we'll use Make.com.
The popular tool Zapier can catch webhooks but cannot return data. Therefore, we recommend Make.com.
Create a scenario. As the trigger, choose webhooks and then the 'custom webhook'. Paste the webhook in Ringly, and it's connected:
Let's say you want to pull customer information from Shopify. This is the scenario you create:
Step 1) this is where you catch the webhook and receive the phone number from the person who's calling.
Step 2) here is the action from Shopify called "Search for Customers". Add the phone number from step 1 in the query, in this format: +16135555555. You can use all kinds of tools where customer data is stored though, like Google Sheets.
Step 3) Now you send the customer information back to the agent. Choose webhooks again and then 'Webhook response". The format is important of what you send back. Here is a good example:
{ "dynamic_variables": {
"first_name": "Richard",
"address": "183 Fifth Avenue",
"last_order_name": "#15092",
"order_count": 5,
"total_spend": "$943.20"
} }
This is what it looks like when pasted in webflow:
Now you can use information like first_name and total_spend in the agent's instructions as dynamic variables.
The agent only picks up the phone after it received the webhook response, so you can even use the dynamic variables in the greeting message!
What if there is no info available about this customer?
The webhook has a timeout of 10 seconds. If within 10 seconds no success status (2xx) is received, the webhook will be retried up to 3 times. If not successful, you can use fallbacks for the dynamic variables. Read how to do that here.
How is this different from the feature that remembers conversations?
The conversation memory only uses call transcript in your Call history. The inbound webhook can use external information, like that in your Shopify customer base, or Google sheets, or more.
Why does it not work with web calls?
This only works with phone calls because we you'll use the phone number to determine who the customer is, and with web calls you don't get any info about the customer.
Why does it not work with outbound calls?
For outbound calls you can send all the customer information to the agent before it makes a phone call. Read more on variables for outbound here.