Automation in Chatlane

Chatlane Automation lets you message the right customers at the right moment — automatically. It brings the event-driven marketing you may know from tools like Customer.io directly into your support inbox, so your customer data, conversation history, and automated outreach all live in one place.

The building blocks

Automation is made of four pieces that build on each other:

1. Events & attributes — your systems (or your AI agents) record what customers do (request_quote, place_order, complaint) and what they're like (currency, locale, total spend). This is the raw data everything else runs on. Read more →

2. Segments — live groups of contacts defined by rules over attributes and events, e.g. "requested a quote in the last 7 days and hasn't ordered since". Contacts enter and leave automatically as their data changes. Read more →

3. Broadcasts — one-off messages sent to everyone in a segment, on any channel your inbox supports (email, SMS, WhatsApp, web chat). Read more →

4. Workflows — multi-step automations that enroll contacts when they perform an event or enter a segment, then send messages, wait, branch, and update data over time — with goals and conversion tracking. Read more →

Why it lives in your inbox

Unlike a standalone marketing tool, Chatlane Automation shares everything with your support operation:

• Messages land in the contact's existing conversation thread. Your agents see the full picture — including what automated messages a customer received — and customers reply in the same place they always have.
• AI agents feed the data. An agent handling an inbound enquiry can record events (like request_quote or complaint) directly on the contact, so automations trigger from real conversations, not just website activity.
• AI agents write the messages. Workflow steps can hand composition to one of your AI agents, which reads the conversation history and writes a personalised follow-up in the customer's own language.

A worked example

The classic use case — an abandoned quote follow-up:

1. A customer messages your inbox asking for a quote. Your AI agent (or your ordering system, via the API) records a request_quote event.
2. A segment — performed request_quote in the last 7 days AND performed place_order exactly 0 times since — picks them up automatically.
3. A workflow triggered by that segment waits 2 days, checks they still haven't ordered, and has your AI agent write a friendly, personalised follow-up into their existing thread.
4. If they order during the wait, the goal event (place_order) exits them from the workflow before anything sends — and the order is recorded as a conversion with its value attributed to the workflow.

Who can manage automation

Segments, broadcasts, and workflows are managed by team Owners and Admins, from the Automation section in the sidebar.

Good to know

• Marketing suppression is built in — a contact marked as unsubscribed from marketing is automatically skipped by every broadcast and workflow send. Self-serve unsubscribe links for recipients are coming soon.
• WhatsApp has a platform rule: outside the 24-hour window after a customer's last message, only pre-approved templates can be sent. Chatlane enforces this and can fall back to another channel.
• Everything is auditable: every broadcast shows per-recipient outcomes, and every workflow shows a per-step log for every enrolled contact.