Assessment - Messenger Chatbot: appointment booking

When I applied for the Digital Marketing Specialist position at Furnichannel, I was requested to complete an assessment task. This consisted in creating a Messenger chatbot for profiling the user and automating appointment bookings.

Although simple, this application might be an inspiration for you to take the idea further, so I decided to post this here. Feel free to adapt it to your needs!

Automate appointment booking with a chatbot

You can find the assessment instruction and the application in the links below.

Assessment instructions: link.

Assessment page: link.

Disclaimer: Spotti Milano was picked as an industry reference for the bot merely for the purpose of the assessment. The company and I are completely unaffiliated. The information contained in the bot is completely fabricated, including services and people. Images are taken from copyright-free websites. Being a demo, the bot is accessible only at the link above.

A/N 06/2020. This post and the solution offered are quite outdated, as ManyChat received major updates and Facebook updated the Terms & Conditions for Messenger bots several times. Being a simple demo, it is not supported or maintained anymore. Any software update may break the bot at any time.

Chatbot logic

The user interacts with the bot (ManyChat), profiling himself and picking an appointment option. The bot sends data to Make.com (previously Integromat), which calculates the date and writes appointment time and user info on Google Sheets. The user is asked for confirmation as is sent a reminder the day before the appointment.

The chatbot is divided in 5 main flows, plus a reminder:

• Optin message: profiles the user as consumer/professional.
• Consumer: sends brief company presentation, image gallery, GMap link with directions.
• Professional: introduces team and services, invites user to book an appointment.
• Appointment: pick between phone or in-store appointment, date, confirmation. If phone is picked, the phone number is asked immediately.
• Contact details: asks for e-mail and phone contact information (if not obtained already). Ends with option to change appointment date.
• Reminder: furthermore, a reminder is sent the day before the appointment.

The Google Sheet document used for this is not accessible, as it contains sensitive data. It was structured in 4 sheets:

• Chatbot data: appointment list. If the user requests a date change, a new row is added to preserve the previous data.
• Log: worksheet used by 
• Consumers: list of “consumer” user.
• Professionisti: list of “professional” users.

Additional information

Tools used: ManyChat Pro, Integromat, Google Sheet.

Note that this automation was realized before ManyChat had a calendar widget – as such, it is obsolete. You should also be aware of the newest bot policies on Messenger.

ManyChat Pro is required (paid), while Make.com and Google only require the free tier.

Date fields are always a bit troublesome, as different tools use different standards. As such, I had to experiment a bit to get the right formatting working on all three tools.

As already mentioned, the Google Sheet document is not accessible due to privacy concerns.

Texts are in Italian only.

Let me know if you found this useful!