Use the “Wait for Response” action to pause the flow at this action until the contact responds. A contact’s response will be evaluated against the response rules (explained in more detail below).
You can also choose to add a timer to a Wait for Response action. The contact will continue in the flow once the set amount of time passes, even if they haven’t responded. To do this, check “Continue when there is no response” and select the desired amount of time.
To determine how the contact’s response will be evaluated, complete the following steps:
Select a response rule
Add values that correspond to the expected response
Name the categories that responses will be sorted into
Name the result
Response Rules & Expected Values
The response rules you select are used to evaluate the contact’s response. The default response rule is “has any of the words.” Click the down arrow to view the other options.
The response rules fall into categories that are based on text, number, date/time, contact information, or location, with a few exceptions.
In the box next to each response rule, enter any expected values (responses that you anticipate from the contact) for that rule. Add as many variations as you can think of. Capitalization (or lack thereof) does not matter.
Text-Based Response Rules will prompt you to input text as expected values. Use commas to separate singular expected values or commas to separate phrases (i.e. “i don’t know, i’m not sure”)
“Has any of the words”
“Has all of the words”
“Has the phrase”
“Has only the phrase”
“Starts with”
“Has some text” is a general catch-all for any response with text.
Number-Based Response Rules
“Has a number between”
“Has a number below”
“Has a number at or below”
“Has a number equal to”
“Has a number at or above”
“Has a number above”
“Has a number” (general)
Date/Time-Based Response Rules
“Has a date before”
“Has a date equal to”
“Has a date after”
“Has a date” (general)
“Has a time” (general)
Contact-Based Response Rules
“Has a phone number” (general)
“Has an email” (general)
Location-Based Response Rules
“Has state”
“Has district” requires specifying the state that the district is located in.
“Has ward” requires specifying the state and district that the ward is located in.
Other Response Rules
“Has an image” (general)
“Matches regex”
Response rules are evaluated from top to bottom. Once a match is detected, the response will be sorted in the corresponding category, and no other rules will be evaluated.
Additionally, a contact’s response will be evaluated from left to right. This means that if a contact responds “I have no job, so yeah” to the question “Are you currently unemployed?” they will be sorted into the No category because “no” appears first in their response. For this reason, we encourage you to explicitly specify the desired responses when you ask a question. See the example below.
Name the Categories
Once you’ve entered your expected values, the platform will pre-fill the category name with the first value you entered. Rename the categories as desired. In the example below, responses will be sorted into the “Yes” or “No” categories.
There will always be an additional empty category at the bottom of the list. This is the “Other” category, a catch-all for any responses that do not fit into the categories you have specified. If you use the “Continue when there is no response…” feature, all contacts that have not responded will be filtered into the “Other” category.
Once you’ve created categories, you will be able to create connections to new ActionSets by dragging the red dot at the bottom of each category.
Name the Result
Every time you use a “Wait for Response” action, the contact’s response will be saved as a variable, which you can use later. You can reference this result by using @results.resultname.
In the example below, if the contact replies “yeah,” they will be sorted into the “Yes” category and receive the following message:
You answered: yeah
Sorry, you are not eligible for our job training program.
For more on how to use variables, check out Introduction to Flow Variables.
Response rules allow you to:
Change numeric responses to narrative responses (or vice versa). For example, if you ask your contacts to rate their satisfaction with a service on a scale from 1 to 5, you can then sort those responses into an appropriately named category, such as “Poor” or “Excellent.”
Create a pause in your flow. You can also add a “Wait for Response” action with no response rules and a set time expiration as a way to add a pause to the flow. This is useful when you’re sending a series of messages and want to give the contact time before you send the next message.
Accomplish any variety of objectives! We encourage you to explore this feature’s versatility.
Up Next: Send a Broadcast