πŸ‘‹ Greeting and Away Messages

On this page, you learn how to create greetings and away messages on your WhatsApp Business app.

You must already have the WhatsApp Business App installed on your phone and set up your profile. Follow the steps below to set up greeting and away messages.

How to Set up Greeting and Away Messages

Automatic greeting messages are a great way to give a warm welcome to your customers. These messages are sent automatically whenever someone sends you a WhatsApp message for the first time. Greeting messages do not have a defined schedule.

Away messages, on the other hand, are similar to out-of-office messages; they’re sent when you’re away and can be set to either the same schedule in your business profile or to a different one.

Greeting Messages

From your Settings, go to Business tools, and select Greeting message:

WhatsApp Business tools.

Set the Send greeting message toggle to On. You can then change the contents of the message by clicking on the pencil icon**:**

Toggle Send greeting message.

You can customize the greeting message further by clicking on Recipients. Perhaps you wish to send this message only to people you don’t know, or you wish to add specific exceptions:

Customizing recepients for greeting messages.

Away Messages

For away messages, go to Settings once again, Business tools, and select Away message:

WhatsApp Business tools.

Here, turn the Send away message on. You can edit the message by clicking on the pencil icon:

Toggle Send away message.

Away messages come with defined schedules, and selecting Schedule will allow you to choose from one of the following:

Always send – The message will be sent whenever someone tries to contact you. This is useful for when you’re out on holiday.

Custom schedule – This option allows you to define when the away message will be sent and when it won’t.

Outside of business hours – This option will follow the business hours defined in your business profile. Away messages will be sent whenever you receive a message outside those hours.

Now, let’s try them out. Send a message to yourself on your WhatsApp Business app number, or ask a friend to help out. If you’ve set a greeting and an away message, and it’s outside your office hours, you should see both the greeting and the away message like this:

Customer receiving an away message on WhatsApp.

That’s it! You’re now ready to connect with your customers over WhatsApp.