5 WhatsApp Chatbot Flows for a Small Business

What a Flow Is

A flow is a small set of steps that run when someone messages your business number. It can reply, ask a question, offer buttons, and hand the conversation to a person. You build it once and it runs for every customer who triggers it.

The five flows below use only the node types our builder ships with: a keyword trigger, send buttons, ask a question, and handoff to a human. No code, no new tooling.

Build One in Three Moves

1. Open Chatbot flows and create a flow.
2. Add a trigger keyword and the first node, then connect the nodes in order.
3. Test it with Test Flow before you switch it on.

Test Flow runs the flow against a phone number you choose, so you can see each step without messaging a real customer.

1. The Instant FAQ

Trigger on keywords like "price", "timing" or "address". Send a set of buttons: Prices, Timings, Location. Each button replies with one short answer. If the customer types anything else, hand off to a person.

This flow removes the three questions you answer every day and leaves the rest for a human.

2. The Order Status Check

Trigger on "order". Ask a question: "What is your order number?" Store the reply as a variable. Send a message that repeats it back and tells the customer when a person will follow up, then hand off.

You can also wire it to your own system later through our API, so the reply carries the real status.

3. The Appointment Request

Trigger on "book". Offer time slots as buttons. When the customer picks one, ask for their name, then confirm and hand off to the team to finalise.

This is the flow that saves the most phone calls for a clinic, salon or service business.

4. The Qualification Flow

Trigger on "demo" or "quote". Ask two questions, one at a time, and store both answers. Then hand off to sales with the answers attached to the conversation, so the first human reply already knows what the customer wants.

5. The After-Hours Reply

Trigger on "any message" but switch it on only outside working hours. It replies once with your hours and a link to help, then hands off so a human sees it in the morning.

Careful with this one: an "any message" trigger catches everything, so keep the reply short and give the customer a way to reach a person.

The Rules That Shape Every Flow

Two WhatsApp rules sit under all of this.

The first is the 24-hour window. When a customer messages you, a 24-hour window opens and you can reply freely inside it. Once it closes, only an approved template can start the conversation again. A flow that answers an inbound message is inside the window by definition, which is why flows fit replies so well.

The second is STOP. If a customer asks to stop, Meta expects you to honour it, and our engine ends automation for that contact and marks them opted out. A flow should never talk over a STOP.

Flows also have safety limits. A single flow cannot loop forever, and there is a rate limit on how often it responds to one contact, so a broken flow cannot flood a customer.

Testing Before You Turn It On

Use Test Flow with your own number first. Send the trigger keyword, walk every branch, and check what happens when the customer types something you did not plan for. The Runs panel in Chatbot flows lists recent runs with the last node reached and any failure, so you can see where a flow stopped.

Writing Copy for a Flow

Flow copy is short by necessity, because it is read in a chat window, often one thumb at a time. A few habits help:

• Ask one question per step. Two questions in one message gets one answer.
• Give buttons instead of asking people to type. A button is a decision; typing is work.
• Say what happens next. "Picking a time sends this to our team" removes the worry that nobody is reading.
• Keep the same words as your website. The customer should not learn a second vocabulary in the chat.

Keeping the Handoff Clean

The handoff node is the most important one and the easiest to neglect. When a flow hands off, the conversation should arrive in the inbox with everything the customer already said, so the person answering does not ask the same question twice.

Test the handoff as carefully as the happy path. Send the trigger, click through to the handoff, and confirm the thread looks right from the agent's side. A flow that answers well and then drops the thread is worse than no flow at all.

When a Flow Is the Wrong Tool

• If the answer needs judgement, do not automate it. Hand off.
• If the customer is already frustrated, a button menu makes it worse. A person should take over.
• If you cannot watch the Runs panel for the first week, launch one flow, not five.

Frequently Asked Questions

### Do I need a developer to build a flow?

No. The builder uses buttons, questions and handoff nodes. You need a developer only if you want a flow to fetch data from your own systems.

### What happens if a customer replies with something unexpected?

The flow ends at the step it cannot handle and hands off to a person, so the conversation lands in the inbox.

### Can a flow send a template?

A flow replies inside the window a customer opened. To start a conversation outside it, send a template from a campaign or from the inbox instead.

To see how flows sit next to campaigns and the shared inbox, read our comparison of the API and the app or Meta's documentation at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp for the platform rules.

Turning One On

Flows share the same number as the shared inbox and the campaign tools, so there is nothing new to connect. Switch a flow on only after Test Flow passes, and keep its first week's messages short. If you want the numbers behind the messages, the pricing page has the current rates, and the first campaign guide covers the campaign side.

Where Flows Fit in the Day

The point of a flow is not to remove people. It is to remove the repetitive part of a chat so a person can handle the part that needs judgement. The flows above do exactly that: they take the questions you answer every day and leave the rest for a human, with a handoff that carries the context across.

Start with one flow, watch the Runs panel for a week, then add the next.

A Note on Honesty

Flows are not a chatbot that understands everything. They are a tidy way to handle the questions you already answer, and to hand the rest to a person without a dropped message. Build them for the questions you can predict, and keep the handoff easy to find.