WhatsApp Business has two built-in tools: the greeting message and the away message. They cost nothing and are worth the half hour to set up: anyone who messages you outside opening hours gets a sign of life instead of silence. But they're signs, not salespeople: they say the same thing to everyone.
The real leap is going from replying to booking: from “thanks for writing, we'll get back to you soon” to “Thursday at 6 p.m. or Friday at 10 a.m.?”. Here's the distance, with practical examples.
What greeting and away messages actually do
The greeting message fires on a contact's first chat; the away message when they write outside your hours. Both are static, schedulable by time — handy for saying “we're closed on Mondays” or “we reply after 3 p.m.” What they don't do: look at the schedule, know what you have free, understand what the customer is asking. Every conversation that ends with “give us a call” is a booking left to the goodwill of whoever wrote.
A greeting that converts: three examples
A good greeting does three things: thanks, says when you really reply, and offers an immediate alternative. “Hi! We reply within 10 minutes, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. If you'd like to book, send us the date, time and number of people, and we'll confirm right away.” Don't promise “soon”: giving an exact time cuts the follow-ups and keeps the customer hooked. The line with date, time and number is the most important in this whole guide: whoever writes like that already has half a booking in hand.
When you need a step further: something that checks the schedule
Static replies soon hit the real limit: the customer asks “do you have anything Friday evening?” and the sign can't possibly know. That's where an assistant that checks the schedule comes in: it reads the request, offers only the open slots, writes the appointment and sends the reminder the day before. It's no longer an auto-reply: it's the receptionist who works at 10 p.m. too. The criterion holds for any tool you choose: it must look at the calendar, otherwise it's just repeating a sign.
API or regular WhatsApp? The difference in one line
The free WhatsApp Business app handles the signs; to actually reply — read the request, check the schedule, write to the calendar — you need the WhatsApp Business Platform, the “API” one, used through a software or a provider. Neither replaces the other: the signs stay free, the assistant is the next step.
Frequently asked questions
- Don't auto-replies feel cold?
- Not if they do something useful right away. “We reply within 10 minutes” is warm enough; “thanks for writing” with nothing else is letterhead. Concreteness sets the tone.
- Does the away message lose customers?
- You lose more without it: silence outside hours equals “we're not here.” Even just saying “we're closed, we reopen tomorrow at 9 a.m. — for bookings leave the date and time” keeps the contact alive.
- Is the free WhatsApp Business version enough?
- To start, yes: greeting, away and catalog cover the first year of many businesses. When the chats exceed what you can answer by hand, the bottleneck isn't the greeting — it's the schedule: that's where it's worth investing.