Are you ready to make your chatbot sing?
Announcing the Phone (and SMS) integrations in Watson Assistant
Okay, well maybe not sing but making it talk is now easier than ever! The Watson Assistant Plus plan now includes phone and SMS integrations. With just a few clicks, your customers can start calling and sending SMS messages to your virtual assistant in real-time to get answers to their most pressing problems.
With Watson Assistant Plus plan, you can create the consistent omnichannel experience your customers have come to expect with our simple MAU pricing model. We’ve taken the hard work out of connecting into a telephony system so that you can spend more time solving critical customer challenges and less time focusing on integrating systems together. Let’s check out how easy these integrations are to set up:
Giving your assistant a voice is a snap
You will find the new phone and SMS integrations with each of your assistants.
You will need a phone number and a SIP trunk. A SIP trunk is what lets you make and receive phone calls. You can get these from a provider like Twilio. You can set up a free account to test things out.
When you have your phone number, add the phone integration to your assistant and click Create. Then add your number.
Copy the SIP address provided by Watson Assistant…
…and return to your SIP provider to add the SIP address as the Origination URI for your SIP trunk.
That’s it! Dead simple. Your assistant is ready for phone calls.
Note: Some providers’ trial accounts only allow incoming phone calls and texts from verified phone numbers.
Your Assistant Can Also Respond to SMS Messages
Want your users to send texts from their mobile phones? No problem! Add the new SMS with Twilio integration (currently SMS is only available via a Twilio integration) to your assistant. Click Create then enter your phone number and your Twilio account information. Finally, copy the webhook identifier.
In Twilio, open the Phone Numbers section found by clicking the circled three-dot icon. Scroll down to the Messaging section, and replace the webhook URL with the one provided by Watson Assistant.
Here’s a video that will walk you through the process in more detail.
If you don’t have a Watson Assistant Plus plan, you can sign up for a free trial. With the Plus trial plan you will have access to these two great integrations.
Oscar Kafati is an AI and machine learning product manager at IBM and has been developing Watson AI products since 2014.
