The CRM allows marketers to engage with their audience in real-time. Marketers can use WhatsApp to manage and resolve queries from website visitors and leads, send transactional messages, reminders, and more directly from the CRM.
Connecting WhatsApp
2. Verify your company’s Facebook Business Manager account. Please visit your FB Manager account> Requests > and click on Accept. 
NOTE: This interaction is entirely between Facebook and your company. The CRM has ZERO control over this step. It is suggested that your business keep their Facebook account verified prior to setting this up.
- Once your account is verified and after you have approved Freshworks as a Business Service Provider, your account will be enabled and will contain the phone number of your business that you have provided.
- Select the number that you wish to be used for WhatsApp communication with your customers.
If you want to enable Chatbots for the number, click Enable Chatbots. - Once your WhatsApp number is authenticated, our team will enable WhatsApp Campaigns for your account.
Setting up Message Templates for WhatsApp Campaigns
To initiate a message with your customers via WhatsApp, Message Templates are used. These help you send proactive notifications and messages to your customers.
Message Templates need to be approved by WhatsApp beforehand and will have to follow a specific format. You can create different templates based on your business use-cases. WhatsApp does not allow sending Promotional messages to customers and tends to reject such templates. Read more on Message Template Guidelines here.
Guidelines to creating Message Templates
Content: You can use WhatsApp only to send updates, alerts, and transactional messages.
Formatting: Follow the below format based on WhatsApp’s guidelines:
Template Name: Provide a relevant template name for the one that you want to create. It can only contain lowercase alphanumeric characters and underscores ( _ ).
Example: account_registrationTemplate Category: Below are the categories that are approved by WhatsApp. The Message Templates should fall under one of these categories:
Account Update
Payment update
Personal finance update
Shipping update
Reservation update
Issue resolution
Appointment update
Transportation update
Ticket update
Alert update
Auto-reply
- Template Content: Message Templates are limited to 1024 characters. Your template can use numbered placeholders '{{#}}' for every variable in your message. Each variable can be replaced with text that contains letters, digits, special characters, or spaces.
Here is an example of a WhatsApp message template with three variables:
| Hi {{1}}, your order no. {{2}} has been placed. To track your order, please visit {{3}}. |
The formatting of the variable is important. The numbering must start from 1, be in ascending order, and have two curly braces on both sides.
| Example: Hi {{1}}! Thanks for subscribing to our Loyalty Rewards program. We’ll send you a {{2}} update with your new schedule. You can log in online using your rewards ID {{3}}. Happy Shopping! |
WhatsApp allows you to create up to 250 templates for your business use cases.
| Formatting | Description | Symbol | Example |
| Italic Text | Add an underscore on both sides of the text | _example_ | Welcome to _Acme_ |
| Bold Text | Add an Asterix on both sides of the text | *example* | Your order number is *OD123* |
| Strikethrough | Add a tilde on both sides of your text | ~example~ | This is ~better~ best! |
| Monospace text/code | Add three backticks on both sides of your text | ```example``` | ```print'Hi there';``` |
Getting your Message Templates approved
1. Once you’ve created message templates, you can share them with us in the below format as a document/spreadsheet:
| Template Name | English Content | Template Category | Attachment Type |
| order_confirmation | Hi {{1}}, your order no. {{2}} has been placed. To track your order, please visit {{3}}. | Alert Update | No Attachment |
| refund_initiated | Hi {{1}}, we apologize for the inconvenience caused. We have initiated a refund of {{2}} for order {{3}}. Please find your invoice in the document attached. | Payment Update | Document |
Where {{1}}, {{2}} and {{3}} denote the different variables. Please note that message templates once submitted to WhatsApp cannot be edited.
2. Freshworks will initiate the approval process with WhatsApp on your behalf. Once your message templates have been approved, you can start using them to create WhatsApp campaigns.
Creating WhatsApp Campaigns
- Click on Customer Journeys and select "WhatsApp" as your channel
2. Click on Create WhatsApp Campaign and give your campaign a name.
3. Next, configure your campaign with the necessary details. Select your WhatsApp number, the suitable message template, the language you intend to send the message. 
4. Under the Settings section, you can choose to shorten the URLs, track the revenue generated through this campaign, and add and manage UTM parameters - short text codes that you add to URLs (or links) to help you track the performance of your campaign. You can add up to 10 parameters for each campaign. Toggle the button next to each of the options to enable them. 
5. You can add images to your message, preview your message on the right, and personalize them with placeholders. You can also provide a fallback value in case the intended placeholder value turns empty.
6. You can choose to save your messages as a draft, send a test message, and then publish your message. 
7. You can also choose not to send a message if any or all of your intended placeholder values are empty during runtime.
Using WhatsApp in Customer Journeys
- Build your Journey based on your requirements. Use the Send WhatsApp Message action block in your Journey to automate WhatsApp campaigns
- Select the Campaign that you want to automate.
- You can also choose to create your campaign from within the Journey. Once this is created, you can go ahead and start the Journey to automate your WhatsApp Campaigns.
Responding to WhatsApp messages
When a customer receives a campaign message from your CRM on WhatsApp, they will have the ability to respond to it just like any other conversation. All such responses will be sent back to your CRM and can be accessed from the Team Inbox where your support agents can respond to queries and address issues.
Inside the team inbox, filter out all WhatsApp replies that you have received from your customers by clicking the dropdown and choosing WhatsApp.
This filters out all WhatsApp replies. Select any one of them to start interacting with your customers through their WhatsApp.
NOTE:
- You can respond to a WhatsApp query only within 24-hours of receiving the query. After 24 hours, the conversation will expire.
- The agent only has the ability to respond to an inbound WhatsApp message. They cannot initiate a conversation with the customer via WhatsApp. The conversation can be initiated only by the customer.
You can view all WhatsApp Campaign related activities of your contacts under the Contact Activity Timeline. You can also view all related metrics with the View Metrics listed under WhatsApp Campaigns 
Similarly, the CRM also offers analytics for WhatsApp campaigns. Get insights into key metrics such as opens and reads through the curated dashboard created for WhatsApp Campaigns.
Creating Segments based on WhatsApp activity
The CRM also allows you to create segments based on WhatsApp activities. You can filter contacts based on WhatsApp messages sent, replied to, and more, to send targeted campaigns.
How to filter out Errored/Dropped Contacts in WhatsApp
Use the Whatsapp activity criteria, choose the following filters : Errored, Specific campaign, name of the campaign ( your whatsapp campaign ) and Anytime. Use the AND operator and choose : Entered, Specific Journey, journey ( the journey where you’ve configured whatsapp ) and Anytime.
Note: Sending test messages on WhatsApp to numbers also incurs a chargeFrequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on WhatsApp
1. How do I reach out to my customer after the 24-hour Customer Care window?
As per the WhatsApp business policy, when a customer reaches out to you on WhatsApp with a question, you can respond to them within the next 24 hours (defined as the Customer Care Window).
After the window, you can only send messages using approved Message Templates. If the last message from the customer was sent more than 24 hours ago, you will not be able to respond to them.
2. What is the contact limit for WhatsApp campaigns?
The maximum limit for the number of conversations per day is 1000.
3. What are governing limits for WhatsApp campaign templates?
WhatsApp only allows you to send updates, alerts, OTPs, marketing, and transactional notifications. The content of your template should be properly formatted and text-based. Your template must be within the 1024 characters limit.
Your template name should only contain lowercase alphanumeric characters. Underscores are the only special characters that are allowed, and white spaces cannot be used.
Examples of allowed names are shipping_update, order_followup1, and refund_status_2.
Your template should fall under one of these categories:
Transactional,
One-time Passwords, or
Marketing/Promotional Messages.
The messaging limits determine the maximum number of business-initiated conversations you can initiate using each phone number in a rolling 24-hour period. Unverified businesses are limited to 250 conversations, while verified businesses can initiate conversations with 1K to unlimited unique customers, depending on phone number status and quality rating.
If you reach your messaging limit, you can initiate more conversations as soon as active conversations end.
4. How to get my Whatsapp Business number OBA verified?
To get your WhatsApp business number OBA verified, you need to refer to Meta's document on Official Business Accounts. This document includes the WhatsApp Official Business Accounts criteria and the steps for requesting an Official Business Account.
However, it is important to note that Meta does not grant Official Business Accounts to business employees, test accounts, and Business App accounts. Also, Official Business Accounts are currently available only to WhatsApp Business Platform users, as accounts on the Business App do not go through Business Verification.
5. What to do when the template is approved on Facebook isn’t showing up in the Campaigns Page?
Try to use the Refresh Template list in the campaigns as shown below under your whatsapp campaigns configure page:
6. . What are the limits to be kept in mind before sending out WhatsApp Campaigns
Daily WhatsApp-imposed limit:
This is a DAILY limit from WhatsApp. Freshworks has no control over this.
To read more about messaging limits: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/messaging-limits
Refer to the articles below on how to increase the limit: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/messaging-limits#increasing-your-limit
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/messaging-limits#messaging
Freshmarketer Marketing Contact Monthly Limit: This is a MONTHLY limit imposed by Freshworks.
There is a monthly Marketing Contact limit that you need to adhere to in addition to the daily WhatsApp limit.
You can check how many Marketing Contacts you get by heading into any Marketing Automation feature > clicking on "View Plan Usage" on the top right.
Freshchat per-minute Outbound Messaging Limit - 2k/minute.
7. How to check the billing details of WhatsApp Usage
You can check the same from Facebook Business Manager. Once you open the FBM, you can navigate to Account tools > Insights to check the usage costs.
8. What are some common Checkpoints before sending out the campaign that might be useful?
a. The Contact's phone number should be stored in the default "Mobile" field. No other field will be accepted by WhatsApp Campaigns.
b. The Contact's phone number should have the country code along with the + sign compulsorily - else the message will get dropped. Or the country field should be the field of the Mobile number’s country of origin.
c. The Contact's "WhatsApp Subscription Status" field should be marked as Subscribed - else the message will get dropped. You can check this by navigating to the contacts module.
d. If the Contact has blocked your number, the message will get dropped.
e. If the Contact's number is not even on WhatsApp - the message will get dropped.
Common error codes and how to troubleshoot them:
Please find below the list of reasons that could lead to the contacts being dropped from the journey:
Media Upload Error: The media file, image/video/document exceeds the WhatsApp expected size, find below the maximum size for media upload:
Image - 5MB | Video - 16MB | Document - 100MB.
If the media used exceeds the above limit, the error will be thrown so try reducing the size of the image, update the campaign and hit send again.
Mobile Invalid: No country code, the number is not a 10-digit number or a valid number.
Not Opted: Whatsapp Subscription Status of the contact is not set as Subscribed. You can check this by navigating to the contacts module.
Generic Error: The URL for the image/media is not a publicly accessible one and this is why the contact dropped.The media URL used must be a Publicly Hosted piece of Media, else the message will not be sent.
You can NOT use Google Drive/Canva/YouTube/Local links for any media links.
You can only use publicly hosted file links.
This is not a limitation from Freshworks/Freshmarketer.
How to check if the media is publicly hosted?
Request the URL from the customer and open the URL in your browser, when you open it, only the intended piece of media let it be an image or video should show up and nothing else.
Sample Image URL: https://i.ibb.co/Jms2W1C/RMP.png
Resource not Found: The number is not present in Whatsapp/there is no Whatsapp account associated with the number.
Template Param Count Mismatch: If the template has been edited from FBM but still present in Freshmarketer's Whatsapp Campaigns, you must create a new template or clone the template again in FBM and then sync the new one.
Parameter value is not valid: Could be multiple reasons for this reason:
The Mobile number is not present in WhatsApp or is not in the proper format(i.e, with country code/country field)
Issues with the URL used in the Template
Issues with the Placeholder used in the Template