Build a Keyword Bot

New Keyword Bots can no longer be created

Keyword Bots are retired for new automations. Creating a bot with bot_type: "keyword" (or changing another bot's bot_type to keyword) returns 422 with {"detail": {"code": "keyword_bots_retired", "message": "..."}}. Use a Flow with a keyword_match trigger instead: "if the message is X, send Y".

Existing Keyword Bots keep working unchanged. They still answer, and you can still edit their triggers and responses, rename them, switch them on or off, and delete them. The rest of this guide describes how they work.

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 it uses no AI credits.

Keyword Bots are available on Professional, Scale and Enterprise. Their replies pay the normal message charge and no AI credits. The one exception: when a Keyword Bot starts a Live Chat session on your website widget, its greeting costs 1 AI credit. See Building Bots: Billing.

When a Keyword Bot fits

For new automations, build these cases as a Flow with a keyword trigger. An existing Keyword Bot fits 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 FAQ Bot (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: Open your existing bot

New Keyword Bots cannot be created any more (see the note at the top). To change an existing one:

1. Open Automation in the dashboard.
2. Open your Keyword Bot. Rename it, switch it on or off, or delete it there.
3. Edit its triggers as described below.

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 FAQ Bot 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 FAQ Bots

You can run a Keyword Bot and an FAQ Bot on the same channel. The Keyword Bot runs first; if no keyword matches, the message falls through to the FAQ Bot. Configure this via the Coexist option on the Keyword Bot — pick the FAQ Bot 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 FAQ Bot — pair a Keyword Bot with an FAQ Bot for the catch-all case.
• Flows overview — if your reply needs to wait for the next message, you want a Flow instead.