Watson Assistant can now answer questions through WhatsApp

Watson Assistant has released two features into general availability that make it even more robust and friendly to customers: an out-of-the-box WhatsApp integration and Session History for Web Chat.

Companies can now use Watson Assistant to help their customers on all the most prominent digital channels. For the past year, we’ve supported web, SMS, Facebook Messenger, and Slack. Today, we are happy to add another very popular channel to the list: WhatsApp!

WhatsApp is popular for mobile users around the globe, and we’re excited to see how this new integration will be used to better reach your customers on their preferred channel.

It’s easy to get started. The process takes place in the integrations settings page, it can be setup with just a few clicks and about 10 minutes. The WhatsApp integration will work with the same dialog skill that you use for all your other channels.

We also recently released Session History for Web Chat. When talking to an assistant, or chat-bot, on a website, customers sometimes accidentally close their tabs, or refresh the page, or move to an entirely new page on the website. Without session history, customers would lose their connection to the assistant and would have to start their interaction from scratch.

With session history, customers can now pick their conversation back up without disruption. This quickly opens the door to more complete interactions. For example, having the assistant guide the customer through a flow on a website and even moving them from one page to the next.

These new features extend Watson Assistant’s lead in offering exceptional chat capabilities out of the box — no technical expertise or custom code required. Get started with Watson Assistant today and try these features for yourself.