Compliance and Best Practices Documentation
Chatitive bots are designed to keep you in compliance with industry best practices
Part of being a good messaging citizen is making it easy for your customers to
STOP getting messages when they
are no longer interested and to know how to get
HELP. The CTIA is a trade association representing the wireless
communications industry, and they have a set of guidelines for commercial messaging.
Here are a couple of documents we recommend detailing text messaging guidelines and best practices
Chatitive's bot-based architecture automatically responds to compliance terms for you.
For example, once a subscriber replies
STOP, they will no longer receive
automated messages such as campaigns or message series items.
Keywords:
The bot has three special keywords
START,
STOP, and
HELP. By default the bot will automatically
"subscribe" or "unsubscribe" the customer, and send back a helpful message letting them know what has happened.
Keywords are case insenstive - STOP is the same as Stop.
START
When a bot receives the keyword
START the default behavior is to add the phone number to our system,
if not already present, to mark it as "subscribed" and to send back this message:
Welcome! Thank you for subscribing! Msg & data rates may apply. Text HELP for help or STOP to unsubscribe.
You can override this behavior by implementing your own
START keyword, perhaps to customize the greeting message:
start: function(message, subscriber) {
say("Welcome to MessageCo - we are so glad to have you with us.\n\n Msg & data rates may apply. Text HELP for help or STOP to unsubscribe.");
}
Or perhaps you want to implement
double opt-in:
start: function(message, subscriber) {
subscriber.unsubscribe(); // override the default start behavior
say("Welcome to MessageCo - to Subscribe, reply GO");
},
go: function(message, subscriber) {
subscriber.subscribe();
say("Congrats! We are so glad to have you with us.\n\n Msg & data rates may apply. Text HELP for help or STOP to unsubscribe.");
},
STOP
STOP is one of the most important keywords. It is critical that we obey the subscriber's wishes to no longer
receive commercial/marketing messages from you. The default behavior is to add the phone number to our system if not
already present, to mark it as "unsubscribed", and to send back this message:
You are now unsubscribed. To subscribe again, text START
The keyword
UNSUBSCRIBE is an alias for stop and has the same function. You may customize the final message,
but you may not override the "unsubscribe" action.
stop: function(message, subscriber) {
say("Sorry to see you go! reply START to join again");
}
HELP
When a bot receives the keyword
HELP the default behavior is mark the subscriber as needing support and to
send back this message:
Need help? Just ask a question. To unsubscribe, text STOP
You may customize the message:
help: function(message, subscriber) {
if (subscriber.needsSupport()) {
say("Don't worry - we will get back to you ASAP");
} else {
say("Need help? Just ask a question. To unsubscribe, text STOP");
}
}
On being Unsubscribed:
Once a subscriber has been marked as "unsubscribed" - either via a bot action: (
STOP or calling
subscriber.unsubscribe()
) or
API call, the Chatitive system will no
longer send
automated messages to them. Automated messages are things like Campaigns, Welcome Series or
Zendesk-initiated messages.
Subscribers will get messages in response to compliance keywords, and you may still message them via the API or the Inbox
feature of the dashboard. This is done to allow you to provide a final message or in exceptional cases if you think
ignoring their unsubscribed status is justified. If you are using the API, use the variant of message send API that does
the checking for you (
Subscribed subscribers message API) otherwise,
you are responsible for
querying the subscriber's status before sending them a message.