How to add an AI chatbot to Instagram DMs

Your customers already live in Instagram. They DM about products, ask if you’re open, reply to your stories, then wait. Every hour a message sits unread is a sale cooling off.

Connect your Instagram DMs to Supportweave and the AI answers every message itself — the same knowledge-grounded pipeline that runs your website widget — and the reply goes straight back out as a DM, so customers get a real answer in seconds. When someone asks for a real person (or you run out of message credits), the thread flips to your team's wait queue with its real arrival time and fires a desktop alert so nothing slips past you. Want a human on every thread instead? A per-channel AI replies switch turns Instagram human-first, and the AI copilot drafts each reply for your team to review and send. Here’s how to set it up through Meta.

What you’ll need

• A Supportweave workspace (set up during your demo)
• A chatbot trained on your business
• An Instagram professional (business) account linked to a Facebook Page
• Admin access to that Page and a Meta developer account

Step 1: Train your agent

Before you send a single reply, give your agent something to say. Crawl your site, upload your docs, and add the FAQs you answer every day. The answers it sends come from that knowledge instead of guesses. See the training guide for the full process.

Step 2: Switch Instagram to a professional account

Open the Instagram app and go to Settings and privacy → Account type and tools → Switch to professional account, and pick Business. During setup, link the account to your Facebook Page, or connect one later from the Page’s linked accounts settings. Meta’s messaging tools only work on a professional account tied to a Page.

Step 3: Allow message access in the app

Still in the Instagram app, open Settings → Messages and story replies → Allow access to messages and turn it on. This lets connected tools read and reply to your DMs and story replies. Leave it off and the webhook stays silent.

Step 4: Get your webhook details from Supportweave

In Supportweave, open the chatbot you want to handle Instagram, go to its Channels tab, and choose Instagram. (Channels are set per chatbot — there’s no separate global Channels page.) Supportweave gives you a Callback URL and a verify token. Keep this tab open; you’ll paste both into Meta in the next step.

Step 5: Connect Instagram in the Meta app dashboard

1. 1Go to developers.facebook.com and create an app of type Business.
2. 2Add the Messenger product, then open its Instagram settings (Instagram messaging).
3. 3Connect the linked Page and Instagram account you set up earlier.
4. 4In the webhooks section, paste the Callback URL and verify token from Supportweave.
5. 5Subscribe to the messages field so incoming DMs and story replies are forwarded into your Supportweave inbox.

Step 6: Send a real DM and check the inbox

From another account, DM your Instagram profile or reply to one of your stories. The AI answers in seconds, right in the DM thread, grounded in your knowledge base — no one on your team had to touch it. Open your Supportweave shared inbox and the conversation is there, tagged Instagram, next to every other channel, with the AI’s reply already logged. To see a handoff, DM again asking for a person: the thread flips to needing a human and joins the wait queue, and if desktop alerts are on your browser pings you the moment it does. A teammate opens it, replies from the inbox, and it goes straight back out as a DM.

Desktop alerts are opt-in per browser — turn them on from the inbox header or Settings → Notifications.

Take it further

• Every DM is auto-tagged with intent, sentiment, and a lead score, so your team knows which to pick up first
• Repeat customers merge into one contact timeline across every channel, so context follows them into the DMs
• The AI answers in the DMs just like it does in your website widget — always within your plan's message quota, credit balance, and spend cap
• Prefer your team on every thread? Turn off AI replies for the channel and each DM waits in the inbox, with an AI copilot drafting a suggested reply and writing handoff summaries
• Connect WhatsApp, Messenger, and more to the same shared inbox and knowledge base
• White-label every reply so it reads as your brand, not ours

Same knowledge, same inbox, now covering where your audience already scrolls — the AI answering the routine DMs and your team stepping in the instant a customer asks. See more on the Instagram channel page, or book a demo to see DMs and story replies land in one place your team can keep up with.