WhatsApp Auto-Replies That Do Not Sound Robotic: Greeting, Away and Routing Rules

An auto-reply has one job: stop a person wondering whether their message arrived. It fails when it sounds like a wall, and it fails when it promises a speed you do not deliver.

Greeting messages#

Greeting messages fire when someone messages you for the first time, or after a long gap in the conversation. They set expectations before anyone types.

Business app: Business tools → Greeting message → write the text → choose recipients (everyone, everyone except specific contacts, or only selected contacts).

What to put in one:

• Who you are, in four words.
• What you need from them to help fast.
• When a human will answer.

Hi, thanks for messaging Kirana Fresh.

Send your *pincode* and what you need, and we will confirm
availability and delivery time.

We reply within 15 minutes, 8am–9pm.

That greeting does work: it collects the one field that determines whether you can serve them at all, before an agent has read anything.

Away messages#

Away messages fire outside the hours you choose. The setting offers always-on, a custom schedule, or your business profile's opening hours.

The difference between a good and a bad away message is specificity:

Bad:  Thanks for your message. We will get back to you soon.

Good: Thanks for messaging. We are closed now and reply from
      9am tomorrow. If this is about an order placed today,
      reply ORDER and we will prioritise it first thing.

The second gives a real time and one action. Nobody sends a follow-up "hello?" to the second version.

Twelve openings you can adapt#

Business hours

1. Hi, we have your message. A team member replies within 20 minutes between 9am and 7pm.
2. Thanks for reaching out. Send your order number and we will pull it up right away.
3. Hi, we are on it. To speed this up, reply with your city and the size you need.

After hours 4. We are closed for the day and reply from 9am. Reply URGENT if this is about a delivery arriving tomorrow. 5. Thanks for messaging. Our team is back at 10am Monday. 6. Received — we reply first thing tomorrow. Store hours: 10am–8pm, Mon–Sat.

High volume 7. Thanks for your patience — we are answering more messages than usual today. Replies are taking about 2 hours. 8. We have your message. Because of the sale, replies are slower than usual: expect about an hour.

Holidays and outages 9. We are closed for Diwali and reply from 4 November. Orders placed now ship on the 5th. 10. Our phone lines are down. WhatsApp is being answered as normal.

Qualification 11. Hi! To send you the right pricing, reply with: 1) product, 2) quantity, 3) delivery city. 12. Thanks for your interest. Are you buying for personal use or for a business? Reply 1 or 2.

Quick replies do more work than either#

Quick replies are saved snippets an agent inserts with a shortcut — /delivery, /warranty, /upi. They are not automation, and that is the point: the human decides when the canned answer is right.

Write quick replies for the five questions you answer most. Most teams find those five cover well over half of everything they type in a day. Keep them under four lines, and format the important part — see the formatting cheat sheet for what survives.

On the Business Platform, you build it yourself#

Once you move to the API, none of the above is provided. You build the behaviour, which is why it becomes more useful:

• Greeting on first inbound, keyed off whether the contact exists in your CRM rather than WhatsApp's own 14-day rule.
• Business hours by team, not by account — support open, sales closed.
• Keyword routing: ORDER to fulfilment, PRICE to sales, anything else to a general queue.
• Explicit handover. The single most important rule: the moment a human takes the conversation, automation stops. Nothing is worse than a bot interjecting mid-negotiation.

The 24-hour window changes the maths#

Once a customer messages you, there is a window during which you can reply freely with normal messages. After it closes, restarting the conversation requires an approved template — which costs money and needs to have been written in advance.

Practically: an away message that buys you until tomorrow morning is free; a follow-up two days later is a template send. That is a reason to answer inside the window, and a reason to keep at least one re-engagement template approved and ready. AR-Inbox's guide to message templates covers writing one that passes review.

Four ways auto-replies backfire#

1. Promising a speed you miss. "We reply in 5 minutes" that takes two hours is worse than saying nothing.
2. Firing on every message. A greeting that repeats mid-conversation reads as a system failure.
3. Asking for information you then ignore. If the greeting asks for a pincode, the first human reply must acknowledge the pincode.
4. No exit. Every automated flow needs a way to reach a person. "Reply AGENT to talk to someone" costs one line.

Auto-replies buy time; people close sales. If more than one person answers your number, give the team a shared inbox with assignment, internal notes and saved replies, so the human step is as fast as the automated one.

Next: how to run one number across a team.