Where do my WhatsApp conversations appear?

Customer conversations on your WhatsApp business number appear under Communication → WhatsApp in your portal — one thread per customer, read and answered exactly like a website enquiry. Until someone messages the number the page reads No WhatsApp conversations yet.

WhatsApp comes with the Answered plan, which is also the plan that gives you the AI assistant. That is not an accident: WhatsApp threads reach your portal because the assistant platform carries them, so without the assistant there is no number and nothing to list. On a lower plan the page still opens and explains what it does. See dealer-plans. You can answer conversations in the web portal and the mobile app.

How do I get a WhatsApp number?

The number is not connected on the WhatsApp page — that page is only the inbox. Connect a number in the web portal: open Website → Assistant, switch the assistant on if you have not already (Enable the agent), then open its Setup tab and find the WhatsApp number card.

The card offers two ways to be reachable:

• The shared platform number. Nothing to arrange — the card shows a QR code and a link that start a WhatsApp chat routed to your inbox. Print it for the counter or put it on your website and you are reachable the same day.
• Your own WhatsApp Business number. Enter the number and a contact email address, press Connect number, and finish the connection on WhatsApp's own connection page. It normally opens in a new tab; when your browser blocks that tab the message says so and the card keeps the link beside it — Open the connection page, or Copy link to finish it in another browser. Your customers keep being answered on the shared number while it completes, and an attempt that stalls is cleared with Start over, which puts the card back to where you began.

One precondition worth knowing before you start: the WhatsApp card only works once your assistant is connected to the assistant platform. Until then it says Available once the agent is connected to the platform and offers no fields — that is the assistant's setup being unfinished, not a fault with WhatsApp.

In the same Setup tab, the Channels card has a WhatsApp switch that decides whether the assistant may answer on it. The switch stays greyed out until a number is connected, and reads Connect a WhatsApp number below to switch this on.

How do I reply to a conversation?

Open a thread and write in the composer, the same as any other conversation. The note under it reads Sent from your WhatsApp business number, because that is who the customer sees the message from.

The thread's Status and its reply indicators describe different things. New, Open, Won, Lost or Closed in the left-hand list matches the status you choose in the thread. Replied or Needs reply appears separately, so changing the status preserves the record of who last answered.

Some messages need no reply — a customer confirming a time, or just saying thanks. Theirs is still the last message in the thread, so it keeps the conversation under Needs reply with nothing to answer. No reply needed in the thread header takes it out of that list without closing the conversation or changing its status, and Needs a reply after all puts it back. If the customer writes again, the thread returns to Needs reply on its own.

When the assistant is answering a thread, a bar at the top of it says so: The agent is replying to this customer — send a message to take over, with Pause agent beside it. A thread the assistant handed to you says The agent stopped and needs you, sometimes with the reason. Once you are handling it, Hand back to agent gives it back.

Why some conversations show a customer name

Some threads are headed by a customer's name; others show only a number or a first name. When a message arrives, the sender's number is compared with the phone numbers of the accounts your business already knows and with any numbers you have linked by hand — different ways of writing the same number count as the same number. A thread whose number matches exactly one account shows that customer at the top. A thread that matches none shows only the name from the sender's own WhatsApp profile — whatever they typed into their phone — or the bare number when they set none.

You can make the match yourself: an unmatched thread offers Link to account in its header. Link the customer once and the answer is remembered against that number, so every future message from it matches on its own — the knowledge builds up from answering the conversation in front of you, not from a form. A link you made by hand is never overwritten by the automatic matching, and Remove the link undoes a wrong one. A number that could belong to more than one account deliberately shows as unmatched: the inbox never guesses whose history a conversation belongs to.

Why can't I send a message?

WhatsApp's own rule, not the platform's: a business may only message a customer freely within 24 hours of that customer's last message. When the window has closed, the thread says so and names the customer who has to write first. As soon as they message again, replying works normally.

The other limit is your plan's monthly assistant conversations — 200 on the Answered plan. Reaching it stops the assistant opening new conversations for the rest of the month; existing ones finish and your inbox keeps working.

Starting a conversation yourself

Start conversation in the inbox header messages a customer who has never written to you, or whose 24-hour window has closed. WhatsApp does not allow a free-text opener either way, so you pick one of your workspace's approved templates, fill in their phone number and whatever it asks for, confirm they actually agreed to be contacted, and send.

Templates themselves live under Website → Assistant → Templates. Drafting one — its wording, category, language — is self-service with New template; getting it in front of Meta for approval is not, since that needs a staff login on the agent platform, so a freshly drafted template sits at "Pending review" until a colleague on our WhatsApp team submits it. Prefer to have someone draft it for you instead? Request a template does that.

If a message never showed up

If a customer says they messaged and no thread appeared, check on the Assistant page that the WhatsApp number card still shows a connected number and that the WhatsApp channel switch is on. If both look right, open a support ticket with the customer's number, roughly when they wrote, and the number they wrote to. See getting-help.