WhatsApp’s 24-hour rule in plain words

WhatsApp only lets a business write freely to a customer during the 24 hours after that customer’s last message. Your agent replies within seconds, so it is always inside that time. The rule shows when a person on your team answers late from Conversations: the message is not delivered and is marked Not delivered.

What the rule says

Every message a customer sends you opens a period of 24 hours. Inside it you can answer with ordinary messages, as many times as you need. If the customer writes again, the period starts counting again.

Outside it, WhatsApp only accepts template messages, approved in advance. iAgentify does not send templates.

The rule is WhatsApp’s, not iAgentify’s, and it applies in the same way whichever way you connected the number.

What it means in iAgentify

• The agent is always on time. It replies within seconds to every message it receives. There is nothing to set up.
• The agent does not write first. It only answers whoever writes to it: it cannot start a conversation, send a reminder or write again to a customer who has been silent for more than a day.
• A person can be late. If you answer from Conversations more than 24 hours after the customer’s last message, WhatsApp rejects your message.
• iAgentify cannot reopen the period. Only the customer does, by writing again.

What a late message looks like

In the conversation, your message is marked Not delivered and, below it, “Not delivered:” is followed by the reason. It says “the 24-hour customer service window has closed” and that the period reopens when the customer writes again.

• On a number connected through Twilio, or an iAgentify number, the message may first show as Sent and change to Not delivered shortly afterwards, because the rejection is reported later.
• The connection is not broken. Under Channels the number is still Connected. The notice “The last attempt to reach the channel failed” may appear: the connection is still active and the notice goes away when the next message goes out correctly.
• The message is not sent again by itself. When the customer writes again, type it again.
• On an iAgentify number, a message that leaves late may use its credits even though it is not delivered. See what it costs to use.

If the reason you see is a different one, it is not this rule: see a WhatsApp message was not answered.

What to do in practice

• Answer conversations handed to a person on the same day. When the agent hands a conversation over or someone takes over, the period keeps running from the customer’s last message. To hear about handoffs in time, check your notices.
• Look at the time of the customer’s last message before you write. If it is from yesterday at an earlier time than now, you are too late.
• If the period has closed, use another route. In Conversation details, the Contact section shows their phone, which is the number they wrote from: you can call them. If they left an email address, it is in the conversation’s lead.
• Return to the AI whatever you are not going to handle. A conversation in Person in charge keeps the agent quiet. If nobody answers and the customer writes again, they get no reply either. Press Return to the AI so that the agent replies as soon as they write again. See take over a conversation.
• Do not count on WhatsApp to write first. Notices or campaigns that start from the business, without the customer having written first, cannot be sent from iAgentify.

The same applies on Instagram

Instagram applies the same idea to direct messages: the business can only answer for a period after the customer’s last message. The agent replies within seconds and is not affected. A late reply written by a person is marked Not delivered, with its reason, and the connection keeps working. The state of that channel is in connect Instagram.