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Apple Business Chat Integration

  • Updated

Apple Business Chat is a new way to talk to companies. You can ask for information, schedule appointments, and even make purchases right in Messages on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch and Heymarket makes it simple for businesses to meet your customers where they are.

Your business can also send rich, secure messages that include videos, time pickers, list picker, requests, and even OAuth. 

Business Chat Features (Rich Templates)

  • List Picker

Send a list of items to the customer and have them select an item from the list.

  • Time Picker

Send available time slots for customers to select from

  • Rich Media

Send and receive, videos and images. These images and videos will show up in line in the messages app for the customer.

  • Authentication

Authenticate customers to get a complete view of their profile and details in your CRM system.

How do I setup a Business Chat account for my business?

There are two types of Business Chat accounts you can set up. Apple requires first setting up an Internal Account for testing and then setup a Commercial Account. 

  • Internal Test Account
  • Commercial Account

The next few screens will take you through setting up each account.

1. Sign up at register.apple.com.

2. Click on Business chat accounts:

 

3. Add a new account:

 

4. Acknowledge all the policies and click Next:

 

5. Select Business Chat account type:

 

Internal Test Account

For internal testing only. Customers will not be able to use this account type.

1. Select Internal Test Account.

2. Give an Internal name to the account:

     

 

3. Select the customer service platform Heymarket:     

     

 

4.       Click “Add” and add the Apple IDs of the user’s who will be testing the integration. These users will receive a link from which they can initiate messages and test:

 

5.      Enter your Apple Pay details. To use this feature register for a Merchant ID in your Apple developer’s account. Note: Heymarket does not currently support ApplePay. This step is optional:

 

6. Assign a technical contact. This person will be Apple’s technical point of contact:

         

7. Set up an authentication URL if you wish to identify your customer that may be registered to your service. This step is optional:

 

Commercial Account 

This is the live account where your business will interact with customers.

 

1. Select Commercial account

2. Specify the number of live agents who will be responding to inbound customer conversations:

           

 

 

3. Select the locations your business is present in (physical locations) and give the location details e.g. address.

If your business doesn’t have a physical location.  Select no public locations and provide a name:                                                       

 

4. Select the Customer Service Platform - Heymarket:

             

 

5. Who can chat with you. If you make profile public anyone with your Business Chat link can initiate a conversation with your business. If you restrict access to only whitelisted IPs you will need to provide the Apple ids of users you want to whitelist. An email with the link to chat will be sent to the white listed user.

 

How do you expose the chat with Business Chat button to the public?

You can embed the link on your website and your customers on an Apple device will be able to chat with you using their messages app:                   

 

6. Assign an account owner. This person will be Apple’s technical point of contact: 

 

7. Add authentication details:

 

8. Manage Header. This is how your brand name will show up on customers iMessage, you will need to add a square logo and a wide logo. Follow the dimensions provided by Apple: 

 

9. Business hours.

Add your business hours.  

Estimated response time: Make sure you set expectations on how long it will take a team member to get back to a customer.  This is your estimated response time.

 

10. Unsupported devices

If customers try to communicate with you from a Business Chat channel but are using a device that is not supported. Please add a redirect URL which will redirect the customer to an error or a channel their device supports.

 

Connect to Heymarket

Once your account is approved by Apple, do the following:

1. Click on your Business chat account name.

2. Under Customer Service Platform Configuration, select Connect to Heymarket:

 

3. Click on the connect button to log in to Heymarket:

 

 

 

4. You will be redirected to configure your Business Chat account in Heymarket:

 

5. Set up Business Chat templates. This section will show you the type of Business Chat templates you can add in Heymarket.

 

List Picker  

You can send contacts a list of items to choose from. You can have one or more lists in a single template. Each list can also be customized to have Received and Replied message preconfigured.

The name of the template is internal to your team and will never be displayed to the customer. You can also add images to the list items.

Populated:

 

Customer View:

When received the customer will view the options and they can select from one of the items in the list.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time Picker  

You can send a few dates and times for your customers to choose from. This is great to schedule meetings or other events. You can also configure the text in Received and Reply message for the customer. 

Agent View:

 

Customer View:

 

 

Rich Media 

You can send videos and images to your customers using the Rich Media template. The benefit is that the message can have a redirect URL the customer will be taken to after tapping the message.

Go to ABC and click on create Rich Media template.

 

Populated Rich Media template - Agent View:

 

Customer View: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apple Pay 

You can request secure payments from customers using Apple Pay. If you have set up your merchant information, you can request for payments directly using Business Chat with the Heymarket Apple Pay template. The payment can include total amounts for items, shipping and and additional fees.

Note: Heymarket does not currently support ApplePay transactions. The included instructions/examples are of general Apple Business Chat use and not through the Heymarket integration.

 

Agent View:

 

 

 

Customer View:


OAuth Request 

You can request to identify your customer using OAuth if they are subscribed to your sevice and log in using OAuth. Use the Oauth template to set up the an OAuth request.

 

Agent View:

 

Customer View:

 

 

Considerations

Starting and Ending Conversation

Business Chat customers must be ones who initiate a conversation with the business. Once the conversation is initiated, an agent can reply to the customer. The customer’s identity is not revealed for  to privacy reasons. You can ask the customer for their details or have them log in to your service to identify them, but this should only be done if necessary

 

Conversations are kept active till the customer deletes them, after which you will not be able to send a message to the customer (unless they initiate the message conversation again).

 

Lists and Campaigns

Heymarket Lists and Campaigns are not supported with Business Chat at this time.

 

Auto Response Automation 

You are required to create an “First Incoming Message” auto response trigger to set the expectation on how long you will take to get back to the customer.

 

Entry Points

You can add an Apple Business Chat Message Us button on any  website by simply adding the Business Chat URL in your configuration. This button should be applied to browser sessions in Apple devices only. Contact your website administrator to set this up.

If you choose the iOS entry point, a customer that searches for your business will be able to message you from their iOS search results as well.

 

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