The problem with running a business chat on a personal habit
Most small businesses start answering customers on WhatsApp the same way they text a friend. That works until the volume grows. A message arrives at 11pm, nobody replies until morning, and the customer has already messaged a competitor. Or the same five questions come in every day and you type the same answer by hand every time. WhatsApp has built specific features to handle exactly this, but they live in the WhatsApp Business app, not the standard consumer app, and they are easy to misconfigure.
This guide walks through the three tools that carry most of the weight: automatic greeting and away messages, business hours, and broadcast lists. I will show you where each setting lives on Android and iPhone, explain what is actually happening underneath, and point out the mistakes that quietly cost you replies. Everything here works with the free WhatsApp Business app. Nothing requires the paid Cloud API or a developer.
Set up a WhatsApp Business auto reply that people actually read
The WhatsApp Business app gives you two kinds of automated messages, and they solve different problems. A greeting message fires the first time a new contact writes to you, or when a contact returns after 14 days of silence. An away message fires when someone writes to you outside the hours you define. Neither one is a chatbot. They send a single canned text, once, and then stop. Understanding that limit keeps your expectations honest.
Turning on the away message (Android and iPhone)
Open WhatsApp Business, tap the three dots on Android or Settings on iPhone, then go to Business tools and select Away message. Toggle it on and write your text. Under Schedule you get three choices. Always send replies immediately regardless of time. Custom schedule lets you pick specific hours. Outside of business hours ties the away message directly to the hours you set elsewhere in the app, which is the option most businesses want. Finally, under Recipients, you can send to everyone, everyone not in your address book, everyone except certain contacts, or only selected contacts. Save and it is live.
The greeting message lives in the same Business tools menu. It has fewer options because it only needs a recipient list, not a schedule. Keep it short. A greeting that runs three paragraphs looks like a wall of text on a phone screen and gets skimmed past.
What to actually write
Good automated copy sets a time expectation and gives the person something to do while they wait. “Thanks for messaging Rossi Plumbing. We read every message and reply within one business day. For an emergency callout, phone 044 555 0100.” That does three jobs: confirms receipt, sets a deadline, and offers a faster path for urgent cases. If you get stuck on wording, our Auto-Reply Message Generator produces greeting and away drafts you can paste straight into the app and adjust. For a full published schedule to include in the message, the Business Hours Generator formats your opening times cleanly.
Business hours: the setting that controls everything else
Business hours in WhatsApp Business do more than show up on your profile. When you set your away message to “Outside of business hours,” the app reads these exact times to decide when to auto reply. Get the hours wrong and your away message fires during the day or stays silent all night.
Find them under Business tools, then Business hours, or through your Business profile. You can mark yourself as Open with set hours, Always open, or Open for selected hours with a custom span per day. Set each day individually, because most businesses do not keep identical hours seven days a week. WhatsApp uses your phone’s time zone, so if you travel or your device clock is wrong, the schedule shifts with it. That is a common cause of “my away message is sending at noon” complaints.
Publishing accurate hours also helps customers self serve. Someone who sees you close at 6pm will not sit refreshing the chat at 8pm expecting a live answer. If you take bookings, pair your hours with an Appointment Reminder Generator so confirmation and reminder texts match the times you are actually open.
Broadcasts: reach many people without a group
A broadcast list sends one message to many contacts at once, but each person receives it as a private, one to one chat. Replies come back to you individually. Nobody sees who else is on the list, and recipients cannot reply to each other. This is the key difference from a group, where everyone sees everyone.
How to create and send one
On Android, tap the three dots and choose New broadcast, then add recipients. On iPhone, open the Chats tab, tap Broadcast Lists at the top, then New List. Add your contacts and send your message like a normal chat. To reuse the list later, open it and edit the recipients.
There is one rule that trips people up constantly. A broadcast message only reaches a recipient if that person has your number saved in their phone’s address book. If they have not saved you, your message silently does not arrive to them. This is deliberate anti spam behavior, not a bug. So a broadcast works best for existing customers who already have your contact, not for cold outreach.
WhatsApp also caps a broadcast list at 256 recipients. If you write the same promotion repeatedly, draft it once with the Broadcast Message Composer so the tone stays consistent and you are not retyping from scratch each week.
Formatting your messages so they read cleanly
WhatsApp supports lightweight text formatting using marker characters around your words. Wrap text in asterisks for *bold*, underscores for _italic_, tildes for ~strikethrough~, and three backticks for a monospace block. The markers themselves disappear once the message is sent and the styling is applied. Bold works well for a phone number or a deadline you want to stand out. Avoid formatting entire messages, because bold everything reads as bold nothing.
These same markers work in your automated greeting and away messages, so you can bold the one line that matters, such as an emergency number, without cluttering the rest.
Common mistakes and how to avoid them
The most frequent error is treating an away message as a conversation. It sends once per triggering window, so a customer who writes three times in a row does not get three replies. Write it to stand alone. The second common mistake is forgetting that greeting messages re trigger only after 14 days of inactivity, so your regular customers will not see them on every visit, which is usually fine but worth knowing. Third, people set custom away hours that overlap their greeting logic and end up double messaging new contacts at night. Keep one schedule as your source of truth. Fourth, businesses run broadcasts to leads who never saved the number and assume the message failed technically, when in fact WhatsApp is working as designed.
Troubleshooting
If your away message is not sending, check three things in order. Confirm the feature is toggled on, confirm the schedule matches your intended hours, and confirm your phone’s clock and time zone are correct, because the app trusts the device time. If a broadcast reaches some contacts but not others, the missing recipients almost certainly do not have your number saved. Ask them to add you and resend. If automated messages stopped entirely, remember they only run while the WhatsApp Business app is installed and your phone has a data connection; unlike the Cloud API, this is device based, so a phone that is off or offline sends nothing until it reconnects.
Conclusion
Auto replies, business hours, and broadcasts are not advanced features. They are three toggles in the free WhatsApp Business app that, set correctly, stop you losing customers to slow nights and repetitive typing. Set your hours accurately first, because your away message depends on them. Write automated copy that sets a clear time expectation. Use broadcasts only with customers who already have your number. Do those three things and your WhatsApp starts behaving like a small support desk instead of a personal inbox that happens to have clients in it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I set up an auto reply on WhatsApp Business?
Open the WhatsApp Business app, go to Business tools, then Away message. Toggle it on, write your text, and choose a schedule (Always send, Custom, or Outside of business hours). The greeting message, which fires when a new contact writes for the first time, is set up in the same Business tools menu. Both features are free and require the WhatsApp Business app, not the standard consumer app.
Why is my WhatsApp broadcast not being received?
A broadcast message only reaches a person if they have saved your number in their phone's address book. If they have not saved you, WhatsApp silently does not deliver it. This is intentional anti spam behavior. Ask the recipient to add your contact, then resend. Broadcast lists also cap at 256 recipients.
What is the difference between a broadcast and a group on WhatsApp?
A broadcast sends one message to many people, but each person receives it as a private one to one chat and replies only to you. Nobody sees the other recipients. In a group, everyone sees every member and every reply. Use broadcasts for one way announcements to existing customers, and groups for shared conversations.
Does WhatsApp Business auto reply work when my phone is off?
No. The free WhatsApp Business app runs automated messages from your device, so it needs the app installed and your phone connected to the internet. If your phone is off or offline, no auto replies send until it reconnects. Only the paid WhatsApp Cloud API runs independently of a single device.
How do I make text bold in a WhatsApp message?
Wrap the words in asterisks, like *this*, to make them bold. Use underscores for _italic_, tildes for ~strikethrough~, and three backticks for monospace. The marker characters disappear after you send, leaving only the formatted text. These markers also work inside automated greeting and away messages.
