Existing Zap - Has anyone created a successful SMS Auto-Response on Ring Central

Hi @Mateo I haven’t built one using RingCentral, but I have built my fair share of bots on chat platforms and texting platforms. 

Are you looking for the inspiration of how to do it with Zapier & Ring Central or the inspiration of what content to have in your auto-responder?

I would set up a bunch of zaps that trigger off of the same thing (new text received by RingCentral) and then add a filter step to look for a keyword. if the sms contains that keyword then the zap will continue. I would then use an action step to send an SMS to that phone number through RingCentral. 

So I might have one zap set up this way:

• Trigger: New SMS received
• Filter: Only Continue if SMS contains “blue shoes”
• Action: Send SMS message: “It looks like you want new shoes, you can find all of our shoes here: https://domain.com/shoes”

And another zap set up this way:

• Trigger New SMS received
• Filter: Only Continue if SMS contains “support” OR “help”
• Action: Send SMS message: “Our support center is available at 555-555-1212 from 8-8pm M-F Central US time. “

Etc. The limitations are your imagination and how you want to do this. 

One of the possible issues is if someone texts in “I need help buying blue shoes”  if the above zaps are set up the way I described here that person would get both text message responses,  “It looks like you want new shoes, you can find all of our shoes here: https://domain.com/shoes” AND “Our support center is available at 555-555-1212 from 8-8pm M-F Central US time. “ 

This is because both of the filters passed for that text message. So you could exclude keywords like help or support from the first zap which would make it like this:

• Trigger: New SMS received
• Filter: Only Continue if SMS contains “blue shoes” AND does not contain “help” AND does not contain “support”
• Action: Send SMS message: “It looks like you want new shoes, you can find all of our shoes here: https://domain.com/shoes”

Let me know if that helps or if you need other inspiration/ideas?

Great ideas @PaulKortman 

Would you recommend separate zaps or to use paths in the same zap?

@Davidh88 I would recommend both :) 

It really depends on the content and the decision tree you need to go through. Meaning what are the keywords, what are the responses, what are the possible overlaps or confusion etc. If you whiteboard out all the possibilities and posted a screenshot of that I might be able to make a better recommendation (more specific) but the general answer is it depends :) 

I recommend miro.com for a whiteboard tool.