How to automate sales in messaging apps
With up to 20 enquiries a day, templates in the CRM are enough. Above that, and where the questions repeat, a sales robot answers at once, qualifies the lead and hands the hot ones to a person. The key is linking the messaging app to the CRM — otherwise enquiries get lost.
Why sales in messaging apps need automation
Clients write on Telegram, WhatsApp and Instagram at any hour. In a live GetGate project, 27% of enquiries arrive in the evening and at weekends — they used to wait until the office opened in the morning. Some of them went to competitors.
When a person answers by hand, they switch between windows, copy data into the CRM and hunt for the history of the conversation. That takes time which could go into closing deals. In the same GetGate project, after the sales robot was introduced each person freed up roughly an hour of working time a day.
Without a link to the CRM, enquiries from messaging apps get lost. The salesperson forgets to transfer the contact, does not see earlier enquiries and cannot tell what stage the client is at. Automation solves this: every message lands in the deal record, the history is kept and nothing goes missing.
Three levels of automation: from templates to a sales robot
The first level is answer templates plus connecting the messaging apps to the CRM. The salesperson still answers, but uses ready-made text and sees the whole history in one window. This works when there are few enquiries and each needs an individual approach. The connection is made through AmoCRM integrations with Telegram, WhatsApp, Instagram and other channels.
The second level is a scripted chatbot. It asks a few questions, collects contacts and hands over to a person. It suits cases where client questions are all of one type and the product is simple. But such a bot does not understand context, does not recognise voice messages or photos, and cannot hold a conversation.
The third level is a sales robot built on artificial intelligence. It answers any question, recognises voice messages and photos, remembers the conversation, qualifies the client and hands the hot ones to a person. In a blind comparison on real correspondence, in 80% of cases its answer was no worse than a human's. This is the option for companies with a heavy flow of enquiries where people cannot answer fast enough.
When templates in the CRM are enough
If there are up to 20 enquiries a day, they arrive during working hours and each needs thinking about, templates will do. The salesperson answers quickly from ready text but can step away from the script when the client asks something unusual. The main thing is to connect the messaging apps to the CRM so the history is kept.
This approach works for complex B2B products where every enquiry is one of a kind — if you sell made-to-order equipment, say, or give legal advice. A robot is not needed here: it will not replace a specialist's expertise, and templates only speed up the routine phrases.
Setting this up takes very little time. In AmoCRM the channels are connected, templates are created for frequent questions and automatic deal creation is configured. People carry on working as before, only faster and without switching windows.
When a sales robot is needed
A robot is justified when there are many enquiries, the questions repeat and answering instantly matters. It works round the clock: at night, at weekends, on public holidays. The client gets an answer straight away and does not leave for a competitor. That is critical in crowded fields — fitness, dentistry, renovation, education.
A sales robot does not merely answer from a script. It understands context, recognises voice messages and photos and remembers the conversation. If the client asks something out of order or comes back a week later, the robot picks up where they left off. That is impossible with an ordinary chatbot.
The robot qualifies the client: it works out the need, the budget and the urgency. Warm or hot leads go to a person with the record already filled in. Cold ones it keeps working itself until they warm up. In a live GetGate project the robot automatically calculates 5 product groups and picks the right offer without distracting anyone.
How the robot connects to the CRM and the channels
The sales robot runs through AmoCRM. Every messaging app — Telegram, WhatsApp, Instagram, Avito, the widget on the site — is connected to one system. Each enquiry creates a deal or adds to an existing one. The salesperson sees the whole history in one place, whatever the channel.
The robot recognises voice messages and photos. A client can send a voice note with a question or a photo of a product, and the robot will understand and answer. That matters for channels like WhatsApp, where people are used to speaking. Ordinary chatbots cannot do this.
When the robot sees that the client is ready to buy, or asks something that needs an expert, it hands the conversation to a person. The handover happens inside the CRM with the full history. The salesperson sees what has already been discussed and carries on without asking again. The client feels no break.
Training the robot for your field
A robot cannot be bought ready-made and switched on. It is trained on your company's knowledge: answers to frequent questions, price lists, terms of business, sales scripts. The more precise that base, the better it answers. This is not simply uploading text — the knowledge has to be structured so the robot understands the context.
We go through your sales team and find where the money is being lost. We look at what clients ask, at which stages they drop out and what your people answer most often. On that basis we build the robot's logic and teach it to answer the way your best salesperson does.
After launch the robot keeps learning. We review the conversations, find the mistakes and extend the knowledge base. For the first two weeks it works under supervision: when unsure of an answer, it hands the conversation over. Gradually the share of conversations it handles alone grows and the quality of the answers improves.
Quality control: how to tell the robot is working properly
The robot can answer incorrectly when a question falls outside the knowledge base or the client phrases it unusually. That is why control matters. We connect a system that analyses the conversations: artificial intelligence reads the correspondence, scores it against a checklist and looks for lost deals and mistakes.
You see how many conversations the robot closed itself, how many it handed over, how many clients reached a booking or a purchase. If something goes wrong, the system raises a flag. If, for instance, the robot starts handing over more often, there is a gap in the knowledge base that needs filling.
Quality control works for the people too. When the robot hands a conversation over, the system watches how it is handled: whether the reply is fast, whether the script is followed, whether it reaches a deal. That helps find the weak spots in the sales team and put them right.
Sales analytics: from enquiry to money
When the robot works through the CRM, all the analytics are collected automatically. You see plan against fact in real time, broken down by channel, service and person, plus a revenue forecast. If sales dip, the system raises a flag and you can react quickly.
The analytics show which channels bring the most enquiries, which services sell better and at which stages of the pipeline clients drop out. That tells you where to put budget and what to improve. If Instagram brings many enquiries but few sales, for instance, the problem is in qualification or in how the team works.
For companies selling through messaging apps it is critical to see response speed. The robot answers instantly, but once a conversation passes to a person, a delay can cost the deal. The analytics show how quickly handed-over conversations are picked up and help hold the standard.
Where to start automating sales in messaging apps
The first step is connecting the messaging apps to the CRM. Without that any automation is pointless: enquiries will be lost, the history will not be kept and nobody will see the full picture. We set up the pipelines to fit your process, connect the channels and the telephony and train the team to work in the system.
The second step is deciding whether you need a sales robot. If there are few enquiries and they are all different, start with templates. If there are many, the questions repeat and speed matters, bring in a robot. We go through your sales team, find where the money is being lost and propose a solution for your case.
The third step is to launch, check and refine. The robot starts under supervision, we review the conversations, extend the knowledge base and fix mistakes. Once it runs steadily, we look at plan against fact, find new points of growth and scale up. The aim is a sales team that runs like clockwork and a view of every enquiry from arrival to money.
Frequently asked questions.
What do we choose if there are few enquiries but each is worth a lot?
A sales robot is premature at that volume, but the speed of the first reply matters twice over: with an expensive enquiry, losing one costs real money.
A sensible minimum is notifications and templates in the CRM, so the salesperson replies at once and looks nothing up by hand. Automating the conversation itself is worth discussing when the questions start repeating.
Clients write to a salesperson's personal number. Can that be automated?
First it is worth stopping, and only then automating. Correspondence on a personal phone is invisible to the company: when the person leaves it goes with them, and there is no way to check what was promised to whom.
The right order is to move the channel to a work number connected to the CRM, and only then to discuss a robot. Otherwise there is nothing to automate: half the conversations happen where the system never looks.
What happens to the conversation when the robot hands the client to a person?
The conversation does not start over. The person opens the same record, sees all the correspondence and what the robot has already established, and continues from there.
That is the main difference from a setup where the bot lives apart from the CRM: there the client has to explain a second time who they are and what they want, and that is usually where they are lost.
Will the robot answer in the evening and at weekends?
Yes, and that is most often the main reason to have one. An enquiry that arrives on a Friday evening has time to go cold before Monday, or to go to whoever answered sooner.
But answering does not mean deciding everything alone. Outside working hours a sensible arrangement is this: the robot answers properly on what it knows, collects what is missing and says honestly when a person will join.
Can a robot be connected if there is no CRM at all?
Technically yes, but there is not much point. Without a CRM the robot answers messages and nothing more: the enquiry goes nowhere, nobody sees the history, and there is no way to measure the result.
What you get is a polite answering machine, after which a person still has to move the data by hand. That is why the CRM is usually set up first and the robot connected to it.
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