respond.io

· #310 most-used

Unify every customer conversation — and automate what happens next

CRMSalesMarketingCommunicationSupportAutomation

Respond.io is the AI-powered customer communication platform that unifies messaging across WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, LINE, email, and more into a single team inbox. Connect it to Actionist and your agents can create and update contacts, route conversations to the right team member, send messages across any channel, manage lifecycle stages and tags, and react to events — new messages, conversation opens and closes, contact updates — all from one place. Sales teams qualify leads on messaging apps, support teams close tickets with automatic CSAT follow-up, and marketing teams keep segments accurate without manual hygiene.

Try respond.io with Actionist Visit respond.io

Average time saved

14 hours

per person · per month

≈ 2 workdays back

Eliminates manual work. Agents eliminate the manual work of routing conversations, syncing contact data between respond.io and the CRM, sending follow-up messages, and maintaining tag hygiene across segments.

Schedule

What your respond.io agent runs on autopilot

A week of scheduled jobs your Actionist agent will execute on your behalf.

28Scheduled jobs

7Agents at work

24/7Always on

Agents

Tue–Thu

Tue

Wed

Thu

10a

11a

12p

Multi-app workflows

respond.io × every other app you use

End-to-end automations that span multiple apps — each one a real business outcome.

6Workflows

6Apps spanned

~21 hrsSaved / week

6Personas served

For sales

Featured3 apps

Inbound message routed to the right rep with deal context

When a prospect sends a new message via any respond.io channel, the agent retrieves their contact record, looks up the matching deal in HubSpot, assigns the conversation to the deal owner, and adds a comment with deal value and stage — the rep's Slack notification includes a direct conversation link so they can respond with full context in seconds.

~5 hrs

Time saved for your team — every week, on autopilot

The flow

Trigger·When a new inbound message arrives for a prospect contact

Trigger

Step 1

respond.io

New Incoming Message from a prospect contact

read

Step 2

respond.io

Find Contact to retrieve lifecycle stage and tags

read

Step 3

HubSpot

Look up matching HubSpot deal by contact email

write

Step 4

respond.io

Assign or Unassign Conversation to the correct sales rep by deal owner

write

Step 5

respond.io

Add Comment with deal value and stage for rep context

write

Step 6

Slack

Notify rep in Slack with contact name and conversation link

Result

Assign or Unassign Conversation to the correct sales rep by deal ownerAdd Comment with deal value and stage for rep contextNotify rep in Slack with contact name and conversation link

The win

Saved per run

8 min

Runs / week

~40×

Every prospect conversation reaches the right rep with full context

Driven bySales Agent

ROI

Savings

What your team gets back — two angles: what you stop doing manually, and what that's worth.

Without Actionist

What you do manually today

With Actionist

What your agent runs for you

Sales
60 min / week
Manual inbox triage and CRM context lookup
Reps manually check which conversations are theirs, open HubSpot in a separate tab to find the deal, and copy relevant details into a note before replying — 10 minutes of context-gathering per lead.
Sales Agent
0 min
Agent routes and enriches every inbound conversation automatically
When a prospect messages in, the agent looks up the deal in HubSpot, assigns the conversation to the deal owner, and drops in a comment with deal value and stage — the rep sees full context before typing a single word.
Marketing
30 min / week
Manual segment maintenance and lead hand-off emails
Marketing manually exports qualified leads from HubSpot, updates respond.io records one by one, and sends hand-off emails to the sales team — a process that takes 30 minutes and often runs hours after qualification.
Marketing Agent
0 min
Agent keeps segments clean and messages qualified leads within minutes
When a contact qualifies in HubSpot, the agent upserts their respond.io record, applies the right tags, updates the lifecycle stage, and fires a personalised message — all within about a minute, no human touchpoint.
Customer Support
100 min / week
Selective, manual CSAT follow-up
Support agents manually decide which resolved conversations to follow up on, write individual survey messages, and copy results into a spreadsheet — coverage is inconsistent and tracking takes 20 minutes a day.
Customer Support Agent
0 min
Agent sends CSAT surveys and logs results on every close
The agent detects every conversation close, sends the CSAT survey via the contact's preferred channel, and logs the event in Google Sheets — 100% survey coverage with zero manual effort.
Human Resources
30 min / week
Manual new-hire messaging and contact creation
HR manually creates the respond.io contact, copies in personal details, writes a welcome message, and books the orientation meeting — 30 minutes of admin per new hire, often delayed until the next working day.
Human Resources Agent
0 min
Agent creates the candidate's respond.io profile and sends welcome messages automatically
When a new hire accepts their offer in Notion, the agent creates their contact, sets lifecycle stage, applies cohort tags, sends the welcome message, and books orientation — all before HR knows the acceptance came in.
Finance
45 min / week
Manual overdue invoice follow-up
Finance staff manually review the overdue invoice list, look up each customer's contact details, and write individual reminder messages — a weekly process taking 45 minutes with inconsistent follow-through.
Finance Agent
0 min
Agent sends payment reminders automatically via the contact's messaging channel
When an invoice passes 7 days overdue, the agent sends a reminder via the customer's preferred respond.io channel and tags the account for escalation at 14 days — no reminder falls through the cracks.
Operations
60 min / week
Manual inbox triage by ops lead
The ops lead manually reviews the unassigned queue, decides who should take each conversation, clicks through the assignment UI, and messages the agent — 30 minutes of routing per sweep, often done only once a day.
Operations Agent
0 min
Agent sweeps unassigned conversations and routes them by tag and language signals
Twice weekly the agent identifies every unassigned conversation in the queue and routes each one to the correct agent by tag and language — no conversation sits in limbo for more than a few hours.
Legal
25 min / week
Manual GDPR intake and case logging
The legal team manually sends acknowledgement messages, logs case details into Notion, and sets calendar reminders for each GDPR request — a 25-minute intake process per request that often runs the next business day.
Legal Agent
0 min
Agent opens a GDPR case and sends acknowledgement within minutes of the tag being applied
When the GDPR Request tag fires, the agent sends the legal acknowledgement, tags counsel, opens the Notion case record, and creates the 30-day deadline — the full intake process completes before counsel checks their inbox.

+ 100s of other respond.io automations

Average time saved

35 hrs / person / month

Calculator

Calculate what your team saves

Team size

5 people

Hourly rate

$75 / hr

Hours saved / week

Hours saved / year

875

Annual ROI

$65,625

Based on respond.io's typical team usage — the visible tasks plus a few other automations the agent runs: ~3.5 hrs / person / week of admin work automated.

Connect

How to plug respond.io into Actionist

Pick the connection method that suits your environment.

Connect Actionist to respond.io using an API access token from your workspace Developer API settings. Requires respond.io Growth plan or above.

Open Developer API settings

In your respond.io workspace, go to Settings → Developer API. You'll need a Growth plan or above to access this section.

Generate and copy the token

Click Generate Access Token, give it a name (e.g. 'Actionist'), and copy the token immediately — it won't be shown again.

Paste into Actionist and test

Paste the token into the API Access Token field below and click Test Connection. Actionist runs a lightweight read call to confirm the handshake.

Credentials you'll need

API Access Token*

respond.io workspace → Settings → Developer API → Generate Access Token

Actions

26 actions your agent can call

Read and write operations available to your Actionist agent.

Triggers

11 events your agent can react to

Events your agent watches for, and the actions it kicks off in response.

FAQs

Questions about respond.io + Actionist

How does Actionist connect to respond.io?

Go to the Apps tab in Actionist, find respond.io, and click Connect. Paste your respond.io API access token (available from Settings → Developer API in your respond.io workspace) into the API key field. Actionist then runs a test call — a lightweight contact lookup — to confirm the handshake before any actions execute. Your API token inherits the permissions of the user who generated it, so use a dedicated service-user token for agent tasks rather than a personal one.

What permissions does the agent need on my respond.io account?

The API access token needs to belong to a user with at least Manager-level access in your respond.io workspace to create and update contacts, send messages, and assign conversations. Read-only actions (Find Contact, Get All Channels, Get All Users) work with standard user tokens. For webhook-based triggers (New Incoming Message, Contact Updated, etc.), you register the Actionist webhook endpoint in your respond.io workspace under Settings → Webhooks — no extra scopes needed beyond workspace membership.

Can I connect respond.io to other apps in the same workflow?

Yes — respond.io becomes most powerful in Actionist when paired with your CRM, calendar, and data apps. Common combinations: sync new respond.io contacts into HubSpot or Salesforce; create respond.io contacts when a deal stage changes in your CRM; write conversation outcomes to Google Sheets; open a Google Calendar event when an appointment is booked via respond.io; or update a Notion database row whenever a conversation closes with a specific tag. Any of Actionist's 200+ connected apps can participate alongside respond.io in the same agent task.

What are the most common things agents do with respond.io?

The four patterns that come up most often: (1) contact lifecycle automation — updating a contact's lifecycle stage in respond.io the moment they reach a milestone in your CRM or sign a contract; (2) conversation routing — assigning or unassigning conversations to specific team members based on language, region, or topic detected in the message; (3) tag-based segmentation — adding or removing tags on contacts as they move through a funnel so broadcast segments stay accurate; (4) cross-channel follow-up — detecting an unanswered conversation and sending a follow-up message via a different channel if the contact hasn't replied within a defined window.

Which messaging channels does respond.io support when used with Actionist?

Respond.io supports a wide range of messaging channels including WhatsApp Business API, Facebook Messenger, Instagram DM, Telegram, LINE, Viber, WeChat, TikTok Messaging, web chat widgets, email, and SMS via connected telephony providers. Actionist's actions (Send Message, Assign Conversation, etc.) operate at the respond.io platform level — the same action works regardless of which channel the contact originally came in through, because respond.io normalizes all channels into a single unified inbox.

How do I avoid creating duplicate contacts in respond.io?

Use Create or Update Contact rather than Create Contact when you're not sure whether a record already exists. This action performs an upsert — it finds a matching contact by phone number or email and updates their fields, or creates a new record if none matches. Running Create Contact on an existing contact will typically return an error or create a duplicate depending on your workspace configuration. For bulk operations, run Find Contact first, then branch on whether the result is empty.

How quickly do respond.io triggers fire in Actionist?

Respond.io webhook triggers (New Incoming Message, Conversation Opened, Contact Updated, etc.) fire within about a minute of the event occurring in respond.io. They are not instantaneous — there is a short polling or delivery delay inherent in webhook infrastructure. If your use case requires sub-second reaction times, design your agent task to handle the typical one-minute window gracefully (e.g., don't assume a reply sent two seconds after a trigger fires will arrive before the customer types a follow-up).

How do lifecycle stages work in respond.io and how does Actionist use them?

Respond.io uses lifecycle stages (e.g., New Lead, Qualified, Customer, Churned) to track where each contact sits in your funnel. In Actionist you can update a contact's lifecycle with Update Contact Lifecycle and remove it with Remove Contact Lifecycle. A common pattern: when a deal closes in your CRM, the agent calls Update Contact Lifecycle to move the contact to 'Customer' in respond.io — support and success teams then see the correct stage in every conversation without a manual sync.