How can we avoid the 24h response limit by Facebook?

In order to keep a conversation open, so you can use free text to communicate with your clients using WhatsApp, Facebook compels you reply to your customer in less than 24 hours. Otherwise the conversation is closed and the only way to communicate with them is with templated messages.

However, this is not possible if your agents don´t work on weekends, for example.

The 24 hour rule states that:

• You only have 24 hours to reply to a message from a new Whatsapp user.
• You can only send templated messages (promos, reminders, status reports, etc) to those customers who have already opted in. These templated messages have to be approved by Facebook previously.
• If you fail to reply within 24-hours, you can’t send any other message, unless the client reopens the conversation by sending another message.

We can use the Whatsapp Connector by Respira to avoid being blocked and send these templated messages. You can see how to set this up in this article.

By responding automatically to the customer, we keep the conversation open. This way we avoid no-replies, thus providing a better service.

Keep in mind that you can also initiate a conversation with a customer by sending her a templated message using the Whatsapp Connector by Respira. In this case, no 24h rule apply.