WhatsApp auto-reply: how to set up a greeting and stop losing customers at night

Auto-replies in WhatsApp are turned on in the WhatsApp Business app: Settings, Business tools, Greeting message or Away message. That's enough for one person with one phone. A team needs auto-replies on official WhatsApp: a greeting, an off-hours reply on a schedule, keyword replies and a menu bot with buttons.

Below, step by step: how to set up a greeting and an automatic message in the app, where its limits are, why night-time leads go to others, and what to use instead of a simple auto-reply when customers multiply.

A familiar situation: a customer writes at 23:15, "Hello, how much is it?". The manager sees the message at 9 a.m. In those ten hours the person manages to write to two other places and buy from whoever replied first. They didn't expect a price that very minute; they wanted to know they had been noticed. A short automatic reply such as "We got your message and will reply in the morning before 10:00" keeps that customer better than the most detailed answer the next day.

What is a WhatsApp auto-reply and why does a business need it?

An auto-reply is a message the customer receives automatically, without a manager, right after writing. It confirms the request has arrived and says when a human will answer.

An auto-reply covers three situations. First, the customer writes for the first time and needs to know they've reached the right place. Second, the customer writes at night or on a day off, and reads silence as "they don't care". Third, the customer asks a standard question ("price list", "address", "hours") that a manager answers twenty times a day. A greeting and an off-hours message are enough for the first two; the third needs keyword replies or a chatbot.

How do you set up a greeting message in WhatsApp Business?

A greeting is set up in the WhatsApp Business app in a minute and goes to a customer who writes to you for the first time or after 14 days of silence.

1. Open WhatsApp Business and go to Settings.
2. Select Business tools, then Greeting message.
3. Turn on Send greeting message.
4. Tap the text and write your greeting: who you are, how you can help and when a manager will reply.
5. Under Recipients, choose who gets it: everyone, everyone not in your address book, everyone except selected contacts, or only selected contacts.
6. Tap Save.

A good greeting is short and promises something specific: "Hello! This is a nail studio on Abay Ave. Send us a convenient day and service, and the administrator will find a time within 15 minutes." Customers usually scroll past a long text listing every service.

How do you set an automatic message for when you're away?

For nights and weekends, WhatsApp Business has an Away message. It is sent on a schedule: always, at selected hours, or outside the business hours in your business profile.

• Path: Settings, Business tools, Away message.
• Turn on Send away message and enter the text.
• Under Schedule, choose Always send, Custom schedule or Outside of business hours. The last option works if business hours are filled in your profile.
• Under Recipients, choose who gets it, the same way as for the greeting.

An important detail from WhatsApp Help: away messages are only sent while the phone has an internet connection. If the phone dies overnight or loses signal, the customer is left without a reply.

Where are the limits of auto-replies in the WhatsApp Business app?

The app works well for one person with one phone. When there are two or more managers or dozens of leads a day, its limits start costing you customers.

Task	WhatsApp Business app	Official WhatsApp with WazzaBee
Greeting a new customer	Yes, one text	Yes, separately for selected channels
Off-hours reply	Yes, while the phone is online	Yes, on a schedule for each day of the week, no phone needed
Reply to "price list" or "address"	No, only manual quick replies	Up to three keyword replies
Menu with buttons	No	Menu bot with a list of up to 10 items
Answers to free-form questions	No	AI assistant using company knowledge
Several managers on one number	Limited, via linked devices	A shared dashboard or CRM, each with their own login

Another problem with the app: everything lives on the phone. If one manager holds the phone and goes on leave, the auto-replies and the chats "leave" with them. How the app differs from official WhatsApp in everything else is covered in the article "How WhatsApp Business differs from regular WhatsApp and the API".

How do auto-replies work in WazzaBee?

The Auto-replies section of the WazzaBee dashboard has three rules: First message, Outside business hours and Keywords. You turn them on separately and choose which channels they work on.

• First message. Goes to a customer who writes to you for the first time and has no conversation history with you.
• Outside business hours. Fires outside the schedule you set for each day of the week. You can also set a night shift, for example 20:00 to 08:00. The schedule uses your time zone from Settings, Notifications.
• Pause between auto-replies. 6 hours by default, adjustable from 1 to 168. Until the pause runs out, the same customer won't get an auto-reply again, even if they send five messages in a row.
• One reply, not two. If a customer writes for the first time and it's also night, they get only the off-hours message.

You can write your own text or, on an official WhatsApp channel, choose a Meta-approved template without variables. The rule works on all dashboard channels: WhatsApp, Telegram bot, Instagram, Facebook and OLX. Auto-replies don't work on personal Telegram accounts yet.

How do you set up a keyword reply in WhatsApp?

In the Keywords rule you set a word and a reply: a customer writes "price list" and instantly gets a link to your prices. You can create up to three such replies, each with several comma-separated words.

Matching can be set two ways. "The word is in the message" looks for the word at the start of any word in the text, so "price" fires both on "Send me the price list" and on "no prices?". Capital letters and punctuation don't matter. "The whole message equals the word" fires only if the customer sent that word and nothing else.

A keyword reply goes out every time, even if a manager is already in the chat, but the same word is repeated to one customer no more than once every 5 minutes. Tapping a template button counts as a customer message: if the button text matches a keyword, the reply goes out by itself. If the word already launches a menu bot on that channel, the bot answers, and the dashboard warns you about this right during setup.

Why are a menu bot and an AI assistant better than a simple auto-reply?

An auto-reply answers with one prepared text. A menu bot guides the customer through buttons, and an AI assistant understands a question written in the customer's own words. Together they handle almost all standard requests without a manager.

The WazzaBee menu bot sends the customer a list of up to 10 items or buttons under a message: prices, services, booking, address, "Contact a manager". When an item is chosen, the bot replies with text or a file, adds a tag, creates a deal in the CRM or calls a manager. It starts on a keyword, on the customer's first message or manually from the chat. How to build such a bot in an evening is covered in the article "WhatsApp chatbot: a menu with buttons".

AI assistants in the AI Office section answer free-form questions using company knowledge: services, prices, rules. If the answer isn't in the knowledge base or the customer is ready to buy, the conversation is handed to a manager with a label and a notification. How it works is explained in the article "AI manager for WhatsApp".

Why put a chatbot on official WhatsApp?

Bots on a regular number connected by QR code work around WhatsApp's rules, and such numbers get banned. On the official WhatsApp Business API, menus, buttons and auto-replies are allowed by Meta's rules, and the number doesn't depend on a phone.

There is one limit that applies to everyone: a bot and an auto-reply answer the customer within 24 hours of their message. You can write first only with an approved template. If you need scheduled sending, that is, a message to customers at a set time, a template broadcast in the WazzaBee dashboard can be scheduled for a date and time and will start by itself.

Connecting official WhatsApp in WazzaBee takes 15 minutes; the steps are in the step-by-step guide. Auto-replies, menu bots and the AI Office are set up in the same dashboard.

How much does a WhatsApp auto-reply cost?

In the WhatsApp Business app, auto-replies are part of the app. In WazzaBee there is no separate fee for auto-reply rules or the menu bot builder: they are included in the channel subscription, and Meta charges each message sent at its own rates.

An auto-reply is sent in response to a customer message, inside the 24-hour window, and is charged as a service message: currently $0.0286. An official WhatsApp channel costs $68 per month. To keep auto-replies from eating your balance, don't make the pause between them too short: one auto-reply per series of customer messages is enough. How Meta prices have changed is covered in the article on WhatsApp rates from October 1, 2026.