Contacts, and hiding products from WhatsApp
Two tools for keeping your WhatsApp customers and your WhatsApp catalog in order.
Contacts
Customers → WhatsApp Shop → Contacts lists everyone who has messaged your store's WhatsApp number. For each contact you see:
- their WhatsApp name and number;
- the customer account they are linked to, if any (a contact is linked when exactly one customer has that verified phone number, or when they prove an order in the chat);
- what they agreed to receive on WhatsApp: Order updates are allowed unless they unsubscribed (for example by sending STOP), and Offers need them to opt in;
- when they last wrote, how many chats they have had and the tags your team gave those chats.
Search by name, phone number or account email. Filter by what they agreed to receive (the tabs), by whether they have an account, by tag and, if you run a marketplace, by the seller whose number they wrote to. Open chat opens their latest conversation in the inbox.
People who only appear in the bot simulator are not customers and are never listed.
Export the list
Export CSV downloads the contacts that match your current search and filters (you need permission to manage WhatsApp Shop). The file has one row per contact: phone, WhatsApp name, account name and email, when they were linked, their order-update and offer consent, when consent last changed, when they first and last wrote, their number of chats, their tags and, on a marketplace, the sellers they wrote to.
It never contains message text or internal notes. Every export is recorded in the activity log with who exported it and how many rows it had. Treat the file as customer data: keep it only as long as you need it, and only send offers to contacts whose Offers column says opted_in.
Hidden from WhatsApp
Sometimes a product should stay on your website but not be offered in the chat: a bulky item you only deliver locally, a product that needs a fitting, a category that does not suit messaging. WhatsApp Shop settings → Hidden from WhatsApp handles that.
- Type part of a product name, SKU or category name in Find a product or category.
- Click Hide next to it. It is saved at once.
- To bring it back, click Show again, in the search results or in the Hidden now list.
What hiding does:
- A hidden product disappears from the bot's categories, search results and product pages. Its variants go with it.
- Trooply AI answers never show it either: an answer about a hidden product is not sent, and the bot answers instead (with the offer to talk to your team).
- A hidden category disappears with all its subcategories, and so does every product whose main category it is.
- A customer who taps an older message that still shows it is told it is no longer available; nothing is added to their cart.
- Your team cannot send it from the inbox with Send product.
- Your storefront is not affected: the product stays on sale on your website, and a checkout link for a cart that already holds it still works.
Hiding is part of WhatsApp Shop: when the module is switched off nothing is shown on WhatsApp anyway, and your list is kept for when you switch it back on.