Default Behavior
By default, we will match contacts with channels using the following criteria:
If you have multiple channels of the same type connected to your account, the channel that the contact last initiated contact with will be prioritized. Contacts can be locked-in to a relationship with a specific channel (they’ll only receive messages from this channel) under these conditions:
- You have multiple channels of the same type connected to your account.
- The contact’s address type priority corresponds with the channel type (e.g. phone number) that possess multiple channels (e.g. multiple phone numbers).
- The contact initiates contact through an incoming message.
- If the contact has never interacted with a channel linked to your account, we will prioritize the channel whose number has the largest prefix overlap.
For example, if your channels are +12505661212 and +2505551212, and you are sending an SMS to or calling +2505661231, we will use the +2505661212 channel because it overlaps the most.
In most cases, we are able to discern the carrier associated with a contact’s phone number and prioritize channels based on carrier, though this depends on carrier behavior.
Custom Behavior
By using the Update the Contact action and choosing the Channel variable, you can create your own channel-matching logic to either assign or switch a contact’s preferred channel without waiting for an incoming message. This new action will allow you to do things like:
- switching between channels of the same type (e.g. phone numbers).
- switching between channels of different types, like phone numbers and Telegram bots.
- assigning Android channels based on contact fields, prefix overlap or group membership (to get around throughput restrictions).
- switching between toll-free and standard virtual numbers.
- assigning a number based on an account holder’s number’s country code, area code, and more.
Here’s how that action looks in the example flow above:
When the contact sends the response Telegram, the contact will be updated by setting the Channel variable to the name of your Telegram channel, which will appear in a dropdown menu. That channel will then become their preferred channel.
Considerations
We will match contacts with channels according to the above-mentioned criteria until a contact enters a flow containing the Update the Contact action setting their channel. The contact will be permanently mapped to the selected channel until (a) they send a message to a different channel or (b) their preferred channel is changed by another Update the Contact action.