If your WhatsApp account has been added to Zendesk Support, you can communicate with end users about support requests using WhatsApp messages. This articles details important information about working with WhatsApp tickets, including the WhatsApp 24-hour rule for replies.
For more information about handling social messaging tickets, see Using social messaging channels.
This articles includes these sections:
- About adding a WhatsApp account to Support
- About the WhatsApp 24-hour rule for outbound marketing communication
- The end user experience on mobile devices
- Bypassing the 24-hour rule
Understanding how the WhatsApp channel works
If you are working WhatsApp tickets, you should understand how the channel works.
You can’t use the WhatsApp channel to do the following:
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Send or receive WhatsApp phone calls.
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Send messages proactively to end users through WhatsApp.
WhatsApp has certain rules that prevent us from making proactive messaging possible. We refer to this as the WhatsApp 24-hour rule.
The following rules apply to the WhatsApp channel:
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The WhatsApp 24-hour rule affects whether the end user receives your replies. It’s very important that you review the information about how this works.
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If the WhatsApp 24-hour rule hasn’t been observed, the reply fails and is not delivered to the end user. Error messages about any failures display in the upper-right portion of the agent interface and in the Events log.
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Macros work as long as WhatsApp 24-hour rule is observed.
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There are triggers and automations that affect WhatsApp tickets. Check with your administrator to see if your company is using these.
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Pictures and file attachments are allowed.
- If you have set up social messaging, credit card numbers are automatically redacted from WhatsApp and other social messaging tickets, even if automatic ticket redaction isn't enabled in your account. You can disable credit card redaction in this case using the Update App API.
About the WhatsApp 24-hour rule for outbound marketing communication
Before you reply to a WhatsApp ticket, it’s important to understand how replies are affected by WhatsApp’s 24-hour rule. This is a WhatsApp rule (not a Zendesk rule) that applies to all WhatsApp accounts (see this article from WhatsApp).
This rule states that:
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You cannot send outbound marketing and solicitation messages (in other words, “proactive messages”) to end users. End user users must reach out to you first.
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You have 24 hours from when the end user’s message was sent from WhatsApp to reply to the message. After that, you can’t reply.
This means the following:
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The starting point for the 24-hour window is when the end user sent the message from WhatsApp. It’s not when the message was received by Support and the ticket was created, for example.
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If you fail to reply within the 24-hour window, you can’t reply to the end user until the end user sends another message, reopening the 24-hour window. The 24-hour period restarts every time the end user sends a message.
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If you reply after 24 hours, the reply is still added to the ticket and appears in the ticket interface, but the end user doesn’t actually receive the reply (meaning a reply in WhatsApp or an email ticket notification).
Error messages about the failure display in the upper-right portion of the agent interface and in the Events log.
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If you don’t reply within 24 hours, it may be difficult to reconnect with the end user. If this happens, you may want to ask your admin about whether your company uses the (paid) templated messages feature in WhatsApp.
The end user experience on mobile devices
In WhatsApp, a reply is called a message and a chat is a series of messages to a single contact or group.
It’s important to know that if an end user forwards a single message from a chat to your WhatsApp phone number, only that message is forwarded to your Support account. You do not receive all of the earlier messages and attachments in the chat, but your end user may incorrectly assume that you do.
Here’s an example. This is what happens when an end user forwards a message on an iPhone:
- The end user taps on a single message in a chat and chooses Forward.
- The end user is prompted to choose a contact.
This can be an individual contact or an existing chat with an individual or group.
- The end user selects your WhatsApp phone number.
If the end user has never had a chat with you before, a new chat is created and immediately opens. The forwarded message appears at the top.
If the end user has chatted with you before, your previous chat opens. This chat includes all of the messages the end user has sent to your WhatsApp phone number. The forwarded message appears in the chat.
Bypassing the 24-hour rule
If you have a Sunshine Conversations license, you can bypass the WhatsApp 24-hour rule.
With the Sunshine Conversations license, accounts can set up and send WhatsApp templated messages. See the rules about WhatsApp templated messages.
You can use these messages to follow up and to re-engage the customer, in case the issue has not been resolved.
- Agents will be able to re-engage with their end-users by sending templated messages, even after 24 hours of the last end-user response.
- Account should create shortcuts / macros with SunCo shorthand for templated messages.
- If the message is not a WhatsApp templated message, there will be a delivery failure indication.
Known limitations
- There will be no check in the editor to verify if the message is a pre-verified templated message or not. Message delivery fails if the message is not a WhatsApp templated message and general delivery failure error is displayed.
- Sending templated messages using Automation is not supported.
30 Comments
Hi Amy, thanks for this. We've just tried creating a follow-up ticket to a closed ticket via Whatsapp, and we noticed a couple of things:
Is this expected behaviour?
Hi Pedro!
Thank you for this feedback. This is the current expected behaviour but I think at the very least linking a closed ticket with it's follow-up ticket could be a great feature to add. I will pass this along.
Does WhatsApp integrate feature is minimum for professional? is there any possibility for a lower subscription? team?
Hey Budi,
At this time there's no plans to make the WhatsApp integration available to lower subscription levels.
I'll be sure to pass your feedback along to the appropriate team.
Cheers!
Whatsapp ticket was closed 24h+ ago. Customer sends me new message via whatsapp. Autoresponder works fine, but message from customer is attached to OLD ticket instead of creating new. Is it expected behavior? I.e. 1 customer = 1 whatsapp ticket?
Hi Savchuk Taras if the ticket is "Solved" but not yet closed, this is expected behaviour. However, if the ticket is in fact "Closed" and you are experiencing this behaviour this is unexpected. If you are experiencing the latter please send a ticket to whatsapp-integration@zendesk.com and we'll do our best to help you.
Hello there!
Does anyone know possible reasons why Whatsapp may not be willing to verify a WA Business account?
Thank you!
Hi Federico Cuelho
This is a very special type of account and our suspicion is this status is only offered to top end brands or brands that do a lot of business with Facebook. However the reality is that the actual criteria is a secret known only by Facebook. With that, we have no influence over their decision to approve or deny a brand. The good thing however, is that this does not change the functionality of the API or what you can do with it in any way.
Thank you for your response.
However I still believe that this situation compromises the image, transparency and trust of our brand.
Our clients see these 2 notifications every time they try to use WA to contact us. One of those claims to provide security and privacy to the conversation. On the other hand, the second one relates to the fact that WA was not able to verify if the phone number and name of the company are related. This is serious as Zendesk arranged a paid contract with us to use WA integrated on Zendesk but our clients dont have much assurance of our identity. The possibility of this denial verification was NEVER informed by sales from Zendesk. Our company is paying for an incomplete and unreliable service from a third party that zendesk is not able to appeal to.
I definitely hear what you're saying. The unfortunate fact is that this is the same case for all WhatsApp Business Solution Providers, we are all subject to the same policies and restrictions. This behaviour that you noted is not unique to Zendesk and not a limitation of our integration but rather just how the WhatsApp API works.
The encouraging thing however is that you can reapply for an official business account if you feel your brand has gained notoriety. Please note however that WhatsApp is extremely selective.
Hi there, our business operates only on the weekdays and sometimes we do have customers sending us whatsapp messages on Friday evenings or on Saturdays. By the time our team gets back to work on Monday, these messages would have passed the 24 hour threshold rule. Is there any way that we can exclude the non-working days (i.e. Saturday and Sunday) from the 24 hour rule?
On a separate note, there are many instances where we depend on the customers to revert back to us (e.g. with follow-up documentation) and if they have taken longer than 24 hours, we can't send them a follow-up reminder to continue the conversation. Is there any other way that we can address this too?
The answer is yes but it costs you more. Ask your Zendesk account representative about templated messages. The solution is also a bit technical.
I looked into it but decided it was simply better to put some basic instructions about only monitoring the system M-F and to write back after the weekend or 24 hours in the autoresponder.
Hi, after an integration is on, can i still using WB on whatsapp web or celphone. i.e, 2 operators on zendesk, 1 on mobile, 1 wahtapp web.
thx
Hi Maximilliano,
The WhatsApp Business app is a completely different thing. Basically, Zendesk will "take over" your WhatsApp messaging. You can't use the WhatsApp app on the phone. The only way, at least as far as I know, to interact with WhatsApp is via the Zendesk agent interface or Zendesk mobile app.
KF
Hi Amy,
We are just starting with Zendesk and Whatsapp and we want to create our custom bots using the HTTP Target extensión and the Zendesk REST API. In our tests that works perfectly with basic zendesk's features. In the article it says that an agent must reply to a customer using the option "Reply to Whatsapp". This means that:
1. Any reply sent through zendesk or the REST API doesn't reach the customer's whatsapp number?
2. If the answer to question 1 is true, Is there any other option to have the customer receive a reply on his/her whatsapp number?
Thanks in the advance!
Hi there,
If i have multiple WhatsApp Business numbers, I've to buy just one time the integration or I've to buy one integration for each number?
Thanks for support!
Hi Ivan Parodi,
You need to pay for the Social Messaging add-on and if you wish to use WhatsApp, you need to pay for each number you wish for us to connect to the WhatsApp Business API. To clarify further, on a per number basis, what you are paying for is for us to host the API client/Enterprise Client.
When a customer writes through Whatsapp and we don't respond within 24 hours, but then we reply and the reply becomes part of the ticket history, and we get an error message indicating the response could not be delivered -- then: when the customer writes again, will our previous reply that didn't make it be transmitted to the customer or will we have to send it again?
Adam Eisenman you'll have to send it again.
Thanks for the info.
I haven't been able if there is a perpetual indicator that tells the agent that the message did not go out to the customer. It appears as if the warning message flashes, and then the message sent (that didn't go through) remains as part of the ticket history but doesn't indicate that it didn't go through or that it needs to be resent.
Is there any mecanism for this?
Hi Adam Eisenman,
If you see the warning message flash when sending a message outside the 24-hour window, it should also be tracked in the ticket event history. However, we know that this isn't always the case and when you don't get the warning, the only way to check if the last message went through is to check the message timestamp and compare it to the message before. We hope to improve this in the future.
Kevin Ford - would be keen to understand how you are managing the weekend with the 24-hour rule. We're in the same boat and only reply to messages Mon - Fri.
Can anything be done with Macros etc?
Motorway there's not much to be done out of the box. Our first solution was to say in the autoresponder that WhatsApp is monitored Monday through Friday and if they messaged us over the weekend to please message us again during those days.
That's obviously not great so we went a more involved route. We have people on call to answer emergencies. So we notify them to deal with the message. It's not great for them, but at least recently it's been fairly quiet due to Covid.
Lastly, WeChat has seemingly also adopted this limitation but it's a 48 hour rule as opposed to 24 hours.
what will be the possible issue when agent are able to receive whatsapp message from customer and reply the same customer without any error (within 24 hrs windows), but unfortunately the customer not receiving/seen any of our agent reply...
Hi Amy Malka,
For search the term mentioned does not seem to functioning any more.
We needed to search as InternalId: 0015554443322
Fyi.
Good morning, i need help with my integration for whatsapp, can you contact me too my email.
adminstradorzendesk@universales.com
Thanks
Hey Jorge,
It looks like you have a ticket open with our Customer Care team regarding the WhatsApp integration. We will continue working with you in that ticket to assist further.
Cheers!
Hi, How to @mention an agent on a WhatsApp ticket?
Hey Chris,
I did some digging and it looks like you should just be able to @ mention someone on a WhatsApp ticket similarly to how you would do so in a normal ticket. I see you have a ticket open with our Customer Care team regarding this so if you do run into any issues let us know on that ticket!
Hello,
Is there a possibility to convert a WhatsApp ticket to an email one, merging all the previous conversations, if, for example, we need to escalate the customer's query to another department?
Many thanks in advance
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