AI on WhatsApp Business: what Meta allows, and what it doesn't

WhatsApp is where a lot of business actually happens, and an AI that answers customers there can save an owner hours a day. But business messaging on WhatsApp runs on Meta's rules, and they shape what an assistant can and cannot do. Knowing them up front saves a banned number later.

The 24-hour customer service window

When a customer messages your business, a window opens. For 24 hours after their last message you can reply freely, with any text, as many times as you need. This is where an AI assistant does almost all its work: answering questions, sending prices, booking a time. Every new message from the customer opens the window again.

Outside the window: templates only

Once the window closes, a business can only start a conversation with a message template Meta has approved. Templates are for specific purposes, such as an appointment reminder, an order update or a marketing message to someone who has agreed to receive them. You cannot simply write a new free-form message to someone who went quiet three days ago.

Cold messaging is not allowed

Meta requires that people agree to hear from a business before it messages them, and it does not approve cold sales messages to people who never wrote to you. Tools that promise bulk WhatsApp outreach to purchased lists are asking you to risk your number. New customers are better reached by email from your own address, and WhatsApp kept for the people who chose to write to you.

Getting opt-in properly

Before you send anyone a template message, they need to have agreed to hear from you on WhatsApp. The simplest ways to get that agreement are the honest ones:

• A button on your website that opens a chat with you. The customer writes first, so the conversation starts inside the window.
• A tick box at checkout or booking that says plainly you will send updates and reminders on WhatsApp.
• Asking in the conversation. Would you like a reminder the day before? A yes is consent for that reminder.

Your number's quality rating

Meta watches how people respond to a business's messages. If many recipients block or report a number, its quality rating falls, and Meta can lower how many people it may start conversations with each day. Messages people asked for, sent to people who want them, keep the rating healthy. Unwanted promotions are the quickest way to lose it.

What a good WhatsApp assistant does

• Answers inside the window from your own facts: prices, stock, hours, location.
• Says it will check when it does not know, and brings the question to you rather than guessing.
• Remembers the customer. The number is verified by Meta, so it can recognise a returning customer and pick up where you left off.
• Uses templates only for their purpose: reminders and updates to your own customers.
• Tells people it is an AI when they ask. Here is why that matters.

Before you switch it on

1. Write down your facts: prices, hours, delivery areas and the questions customers ask most. The assistant can only be as right as these.
2. Decide what comes to you: complaints, refunds, discounts and anything you would want to answer yourself.
3. Check your opt-in: how do people agree to hear from you, and is it written down?
4. Read the first week of conversations. Correct any fact it got wrong once, in one place, and every later answer follows.

Your own number, not a shared one

Customers save your number. If the assistant answers from it, everything stays in one place: the thread they already have, the name they already know. In Speek you connect your WhatsApp Business number and the agent answers customers on it, while you and up to six staff get a group of your own where questions are answered and the day is summed up at closing time.

Meta's policies and pricing change. Check the current WhatsApp Business Policy before relying on any detail here.