Instagram Direct MessagesUpdated 6 months ago

The Instagram Direct messages channel lets you receive and reply to Instagram direct messages and story mentions from Gorgias.

When a customer mentions you in an Instagram story or sends you a Direct Message via Instagram, a ticket will be created - it'll contain the latest message that the customer sent you and the DM history of up to 50 DMs with the user as well of up to 50 DMs. 

Story content isn't added to created tickets, a hyperlink to the story is provided instead. Responding to story-mention tickets will open a direct message that references that story mention in the first response.

Steps

1. In Instagram Business Messenger, navigate to Settings -> Privacy -> Messages and make sure your Allow Access to Messages setting is set to Active.
2. In Gorgias, navigate to Settings -> App Store -> My Apps -> Facebook, Messenger & Instagram -> your Facebook integration.

3. Click the Reconnect button - this'll take you to your Facebook page and ask you to reconnect the account again, so an Admin of the Facebook page must do this step.

4. Check the Direct messages checkbox under the Instagram section of the integration. 

5. Click Save Changes.

Respond to Instagram Comments via Direct Message

You can privately respond to an Instagram comment, which will create a new Instagram Direct message ticket in Gorgias.

To do so, open an Instagram comment ticket, hover over the shopper's message, and click the Direct message button.
Selecting this button will open a pop-up text editor, which you can use to write out your response and initiate the Instagram Direct message conversation.

Only the first Direct message response you send will be sent from the original Instagram comment ticket, then you'll be taken to a new Instagram Direct message ticket, where you will continue the rest of the conversation.

You can send only one Direct message in that thread until the customer replies to you - this is one of Meta's API limitations: in DM tickets that you've initiated, the customer needs to respond first so your messages aren't perceived as spam.

If you do need to follow up with the customer with the second message, the only way would be directly from Instagram. When the customer replies, you will be able to continue the correspondence via Gorgias, even by sending multiple subsequent messages.

The new ticket will be populated with a Responded via Messenger to Comment event, which will include the comment you were responding to and a link to the Instagram comment ticket where you initiated the conversation. It will also include the Instagram Direct message response from the previous step.

The rest of the conversation will take place in the new Instagram Direct message ticket and will function the same as any other Instagram Direct message ticket.

Limitations

• Replies are allowed within 7 days of the creation date of the message.
• Direct messages from one person go into the same thread. After setting a customer on a ticket their next DM will open a brand new ticket with the same Instagram username and without the customer data. You would have to merge the customer instead of setting them, after doing so the DMs will go into one thread.
• If your Instagram direct message has more than 1000 characters it won't be sent.
• It's not possible to repost Instagram posts or stories from Gorgias.
• We don't support the following types of DM content:
  
  Real-time DMs:
  Reels
  IGTV
  Guides
  Products
  
  History import DMs:
  GIF
  Audio
  Reels
  IGTV
  Guides
  Products