Running WhatsApp sales inside the 24-hour window

If you sell on WhatsApp, one rule shapes everything: the customer service window. When a customer messages you, you have 24 hours to reply with anything you like. Each new message from them restarts the clock. Once it runs out, the only way back into the conversation is an approved message template.

Teams that treat the window as an obstacle end up with stalled deals and a pile of template sends nobody reads. Teams that plan around it close faster. This playbook is about the second approach.

How the window shows up in Mokanata#

You don't have to track the clock yourself:

• In the inbox, a thread shows whether its window is open. After it closes, the composer only lets you send an approved template.
• In flows, the WhatsApp 24h window guardrail stops an agent from attempting a free-form send outside the window.
• In channel settings, the enforce the 24-hour window policy applies the rule workspace-wide, and hold template sends for a teammate puts a person in front of any template an agent wants to send.

The playbook#

1. Answer while the window is open#

The single biggest lever is response time. A question answered in two minutes gets a follow-up question while the customer is still in the app. A question answered in five hours often gets nothing, and the window quietly closes on a conversation that was going well.

This is where an agent earns its place. A triage agent can pick up every inbound message in seconds, answer what its knowledge covers, and escalate the rest to a person with a summary. Even in approval mode, a draft that's waiting in the queue is faster to send than one a rep writes from scratch.

2. End each message with a reason to reply#

Every customer message reopens the window for another 24 hours. So a good message answers and also gives the customer a reason to reply:

• Offer a choice: "Would the 10am or 3pm slot work better?"
• Ask for the one detail you need: "Which plan are you on today?"
• Share something they asked for and confirm it landed.

A booking link or a payment link inside the window does the same job. The customer acts while the conversation is live, instead of after it has gone cold.

3. Use templates for re-entry, not for selling#

When the window has closed, a template is how you knock on the door. Keep it short, specific and easy to answer. A template that gets a reply reopens the window, and the real conversation can continue in free form.

Templates go through Meta's review before you can use them. In Mokanata you see each one as Approved, In review or Rejected, with Meta's reason when it's rejected, so you know which ones are ready before a deal depends on them.

4. Respect opt-outs and quiet hours#

Re-entry only works if people don't mute you. Two settings help:

1. Opt-out keywords such as STOP and UNSUBSCRIBE are honoured automatically, and broadcasts always exclude contacts who have opted out.
2. Quiet hours in an agent's limits are measured in the contact's local time, so a follow-up never arrives at 3am for them.

A day in the window#

Here's how a typical deal moves with an agent in approval mode:

Notice that nothing clever happens. The customer is answered quickly, every message invites the next one, and the template is used once, to get back in.

Measuring it#

Reports show SLA by channel and hour, so you can see which hours leave customers waiting longest, and backlog age, so you can see which threads are about to time out. For ad-driven conversations, the Click-to-WhatsApp report connects each ad to its conversations, cost and revenue.

Look at those weekly. Most window problems turn out to be staffing problems at particular hours, and those are exactly the hours an agent can cover.