The free WhatsApp Business app ships with three automation tools: a greeting message for first-time contacts, an away message for when you are closed, and quick replies you trigger manually. Set up well, they cover the politeness layer of customer service in about fifteen minutes. This guide walks through each, then is honest about what they cannot do.
Before you start: use the Business app
These features live in WhatsApp Business, the separate app with the "B" logo, not in regular WhatsApp. It is free, and you can run it on your existing business number. If you are still answering customers from a personal WhatsApp account, migrating to the Business app is step zero.
Greeting message: the first-contact hello
In the app, open the business tools section (via the settings menu), then choose Greeting message. Turn it on, write your message, and pick who receives it (everyone, or everyone not in your address book).
The greeting fires when someone messages you for the first time, or after 14 days of silence. Make it earn its place: name the business, set a reply-time expectation, and ask for the details you always need. Our template collection has ready-made examples to paste in.
Away message: cover for closed hours
In the same business tools section, choose Away message. You can schedule it (outside business hours, a custom schedule, or always), and the schedule option only works once you have set your business hours on your profile.
Keep it honest and specific: "closed until 8am, you are first in the queue" beats "we will get back to you shortly" that arrives at midnight. If some messages are urgent for your trade, include the emergency route.
Quick replies: canned answers you send manually
Quick replies are shortcuts, not automation: you type a slash in a chat and pick a saved answer. Load your ten most repeated answers (price list, service area, opening hours, directions, deposit policy) and answering routine questions drops from a minute each to a couple of seconds.
Review them monthly. Stale quick replies quote old prices, and a wrong answer sent fast is worse than a slow right one.
The gaps to plan around
Auto-replies acknowledge; they never answer. The customer asking "do you have Saturday availability?" gets your away message, then silence until you are free. Nothing learns: the hundredth "how much is X?" costs you the same effort as the first. And everything routes through your phone, which is exactly the device you cannot look at mid-job.
For many small businesses that trade-off is fine, and the free tools above are genuinely worth setting up today. When the message volume (or the missed-lead pain) outgrows them, the next step is a front desk that actually answers: that is the difference we unpack in our auto-replies versus AI front desk comparison.
More on winning WhatsApp enquiries
25 WhatsApp auto-reply templates for small businesses (copy and paste)
Ready-to-use greeting and away messages for after hours, busy periods, holidays and new enquiries, grouped by situation, plus where templates stop helping.
WhatsApp auto-replies vs an AI front desk: what's actually different?
Away-messages and chatbots answer fast but say nothing. Here's the real difference between an auto-reply, a menu bot, and an AI that runs your front desk.
How to write a lead-handling playbook your AI (or your staff) can follow
The businesses that convert the most enquiries aren't lucky, they have a playbook: tone, facts, boundaries and escalation rules.
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