Build a Keyword Bot

A Keyword Bot (sometimes called an autoresponder) is the simplest kind of automation in SendSeven. It watches incoming messages, matches them against a list of keywords, and sends a pre-defined response when it finds a match.

No AI is involved. The response is exactly what you configured — predictable, fast, and free of LLM token cost.

When to choose a Keyword Bot

Pick a Keyword Bot when all of these apply:

• The trigger is a specific word or short phrase ("hours", "menu", "price list").
• The reply is the same every time — no need to synthesize an answer.
• You don't need to remember context across messages.

If any of those don't fit, you probably want an AI Assistant (for free-text Q&A) or a Flow (for multi-step orchestration).

Common patterns

Use case	Keyword	Response
Out-of-office	* (catch-all)	Text: "Thanks! We're back Monday at 9am."
Office hours	hours, open, opening	Text + image of opening times card
Price list	pricing, price, cost	Document attachment (pricing.pdf)
Menu	menu, start, hi	Buttons: 1. Support 2. Sales 3. Billing
Trigger a flow	book, appointment	Flow trigger (trigger_flow response type)

Step 1: Create the bot

1. Open Automation in the dashboard.
2. Click Create Bot.
3. Pick the Keyword Bot template.
4. Give it a name (e.g., "FAQ Autoresponder DE").

Step 2: Add keyword triggers

Each trigger has three parts:

• Keyword — the word or phrase to match. Case-insensitive.
• Match type —
  • exact: the incoming message must equal the keyword exactly.
  • contains: the keyword can appear anywhere in the message.
• Response(s) — what to send back. You can attach multiple responses to a single trigger; they're sent in order, with an optional delay between each.

Response types

Type	Description
text	Plain text reply.
image / video / audio / document	Media reply by URL or attachment ID.
template	WhatsApp template message (with variable substitution).
buttons	Interactive button menu (1–3 buttons on WhatsApp; more on Telegram and widgets).
list	Sectioned list menu (WhatsApp / widget).
trigger_flow	Start a Flow on the contact when this keyword matches.

Priority

Triggers run in priority order — lower number wins. Use this when multiple triggers could match:

• Trigger A: keyword "price", priority 10, response: send pricing PDF.
• Trigger B: keyword "*" (catch-all), priority 100, response: send the menu.

When a contact writes "What's the price?", Trigger A matches first and Trigger B never fires.

Channel filter

Each trigger can be limited to specific channels. Leave empty to apply to all channels the bot is activated on.

Step 3: Configure handoff (optional)

Two handoff options are available:

• Hand over to human — when this trigger matches, the bot also pauses itself and notifies your team in the conversation queue. Use for keywords like "complaint", "refund", "human".
• Handoff bot — chain into another bot when this keyword matches. Use to route from a simple keyword bot into a richer AI Assistant for the actual conversation.

Step 4: Activate

Open the Activation Rules tab and pick the channels you want the bot to fire on. See Deploy to Channels for the full reference (schedule, priority, no-agents-online).

Toggle Active on. Done.

Coexistence with AI Assistants

You can run a Keyword Bot and an AI Assistant on the same channel. The Keyword Bot runs first; if no keyword matches, the message falls through to the Assistant. Configure this via the Coexist option on the Keyword Bot — pick the Assistant that should handle unmatched messages.

This is the most common production setup: fast deterministic replies for the obvious cases, AI fallback for everything else.

What's next

• Deploy to Channels — activation rules reference.
• Build an Assistant — pair a Keyword Bot with an Assistant for the catch-all case.
• Flows overview — if your reply needs to wait for the next message, you want a Flow instead.