Stock and price alerts, and your WhatsApp profile

Back-in-stock and price-drop alerts

WhatsApp Shop can message a customer once when a product they are waiting for can be bought again, or when a product on their wishlist costs less than when they saved it. Both alerts are off until you switch them on, and each needs an approved WhatsApp template.

Who gets an alert

• Notify me in the chat. When the bot shows a product that is sold out, it offers a Notify me button. A customer who taps it gets one message when the product is back.
• Sign-ups on your store. With Back-in-Stock Notifications on, customers who signed up on a product page still get their email, and those whose account is linked to their WhatsApp number get the WhatsApp alert too.
• Wishlists. A signed-in customer linked to their WhatsApp number whose wishlist holds a product that is now at least the Smallest price drop that alerts cheaper than when they saved it (5% unless you change it) gets one price-drop alert, while the product is in stock.

An account is linked to a WhatsApp number when the customer's verified phone is that number, or when they looked up one of their own orders in the chat from the phone number on their account.

Set it up

1. In Messaging → Templates, create the template the alert is sent with and wait for WhatsApp to approve it. It may use {{store_name}}, {{customer_name}}, {{product_name}}, {{product_price}} (the price now) and {{link}} (the product page).
2. Open Customers → WhatsApp Shop → WhatsApp Shop settings and go to Stock and price alerts.
3. Switch on Back-in-stock alerts and choose its template; switch on Price-drop alerts and choose its template.
4. Click Save changes.

Which template to choose

• A template made for Promotions is a marketing message: only customers who opted in to offers on WhatsApp get it.
• A template made for Custom is sent as a utility message: every customer gets it unless they unsubscribed (for example by sending STOP).

The settings page shows each template's category next to its name.

When alerts go out

• Each subscription alerts once. A customer who taps Notify me again after the alert came starts a new one.
• Alerts are checked every few minutes. None goes out during the quiet hours of your WhatsApp channel (Messaging); they wait until the quiet hours end.
• None goes out while the monthly budget's hard cap is reached.
• A product that is hidden, switched off or not sellable in the chat is never announced; the alert waits for it.
• Alerts are sent from your store's own number. Vendor numbers do not offer Notify me.
• A subscription still waiting after 90 days is dropped.

Every alert appears in the customer's conversation in the inbox, so your team sees what was sent.

Your WhatsApp profile

WhatsApp profile on the settings page edits what customers see when they open your business info in WhatsApp: the About line, the Description, Business category, Email, Address, up to two Websites and the Profile photo. The preview next to the form shows it as customers will see it. Click Save profile to send it to WhatsApp; nothing is kept in your store.

• To change the profile photo here, add your Meta App ID (Meta app dashboard → App settings → Basic) to the WhatsApp channel in Messaging, the same field templates with a file header need. The photo is a JPEG or PNG of at most 5 MB.
• On a marketplace, pick a vendor's number at the top of the card to edit that number's profile.

Ice breakers and commands

• Ice breakers are up to 4 questions a customer can tap when they open your chat for the first time. The tap is sent as their first message, so a question that uses the bot's own words (Browse, Search, My orders) takes them straight there; anything else gets your welcome message.
• Commands are listed when a customer types / in your chat. Name them menu, browse, search, orders, cart or checkout and the bot answers them itself; any other command reaches the bot as typed text.
• Click Save ice breakers and commands.