Customers message me on WhatsApp at 2am, in German. How do I answer?
Short answer: You do not need to be awake. There are three levels, from the simplest to the most complete: an automatic reply with your hours and the most common questions, saved replies in your customers' languages, and an AI agent that answers from your own information and hands you the conversation when it is not sure.
Why the hour matters
Someone writing at 2am is deciding now. A tourist in Hamburg, planning a holiday, sends the same question to three businesses and books with the first one that answers well. By morning, when you reply, they have often already booked.
Level 1: the WhatsApp Business automatic reply
It is free and takes ten minutes to set up. An away message that says when you reply and leaves the links to what nearly everyone asks: prices, availability, meeting point. Write it in Portuguese and English in the same message.
Level 2: saved replies in your customers' languages
The same ten questions arrive every week. Save the answers as quick replies, in English, German and French, and you answer with two taps instead of typing it all again. You still have to be on your phone, but it takes far less time.
Level 3: an AI agent that answers for you
It reads the message, recognises the language and answers in that language from your information: your prices, your availability, your rules. It takes the booking when the customer wants to go ahead and hands you the conversation when the question goes beyond what it knows.
The rule we use: for the first two weeks you approve every reply before it goes out. Only then, once you trust it, do you let it answer the simple things by itself.
What an agent should not do
- Make things up. If the information is not in what you gave it, it says it will check.
- Pretend to be a person. If the customer asks, it says it is an assistant.
- Decide discounts or exceptions. That stays with you.
What to do this week
- Open last week's conversations and note the five questions that come up most.
- Turn on the away message in WhatsApp Business with the answers to those five.
- Look at what time the messages you answered late arrived. If most are out of hours, that is where an agent makes the difference.
Written by The W2 Collective team, in Santa Cruz, Madeira.
