What is the conversation node?

The conversation node is a pre-built combo node; it contains both an outbound SMS with unlimited inbound replies.

Hover over the conversation node on the canvas and click on the settings icon to open the settings panel.

Outbound SMS

Here you can edit the outbound SMS, the expected responses, the reply expiry settings and advanced options. This is the first message in your chain of communication with your customers. Refer to the merge fields section to see how to reference a merge field.

Total characters: this helps to determine the number of characters in your message (please note, with merge field values the final character count will vary).

non-GSM characters: non-GSM characters (e.g. emojis) increase the size of your SMS. Learn more about non-GSM characters and SMS size here.

Toggle the non-GSM character highlighter to check that any non-GSM characters appearing in your message are intentional.

If you copy and pasted your copy from another program, such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs, you may find some non-GSM characters have appeared by using the non-GSM character highlighter.

You can also view a preview of the message as it will appear to recipients in the conversation preview.

Expected responses

In the expected responses tab, you can label a path’s name (appears on the canvas) and list the expected responses a customer could reply with to go down that particular path (e.g. the 'Yes' path)

You can add as many paths and expected responses as you like, so you can make your customer conversations personalised and effective. Try going beyond the bounds of simply YES and NO, make your customer conversations fun!

For example; if your outbound SMS says something like what it says above, you can set a ‘Yes’ response path that looks for words like ‘Yes, yep, sure, great’ and a ‘No’ response path that looks for words like ‘No, nope, nup’.

Replies will be routed to all flows that are listening for that phone number and keyword combination. Flows will stop listening for replies from a number when the flow expiry period is reached.

Reply expiry

In the reply expiry tab, you can configure how long Pendula should keep the flow open to inbound replies. Once replies have expired, the flow will no longer match inbound messages for these keywords, and remove any remaining contacts from the flow.

Please note this is different to offer expiry. Reply expiry lets your flow successfully ‘complete’. If you want to build offer expiry functionality into your Pendula flow, you should use criteria split nodes. Learn more about criteria split nodes here.

Advanced

Do not edit the node output key. This is for Pendula internal use.