WhatsApp Automations: When This Happens, Do That

Every small business has a handful of routines it does by memory. Welcome the new lead. Message the customer who did not turn up. Ask the regular whether it is time for the next visit. Tag the person who asked for a quote. They are simple, and they get forgotten on busy days. An automation in Convelly is a set of instructions that runs by itself: when this happens, check this, then do that, wait, and do something else depending on whether the customer replied. You build it on a visual canvas by adding steps, or you describe it to Elly in one sentence and approve the flow it proposes. The guide on WhatsApp business automation, end to end covers the wider picture; this page is about what the automations in Convelly can actually do.

What can start an automation

An automation begins with a trigger, and the triggers cover most of what happens in a business day:

• A customer sends a message, taps a button, or a message you sent was delivered or read.
• A new customer is created, from a chat, an import, a lead ad or Instagram; a customer's details change; a tag is added; or their source changes.
• A deal is created, changed, moved to another stage, tagged, or its source changes.
• A payment comes in.
• An appointment is booked, confirmed, cancelled, moved, marked as no-show, or completed. You can limit this to certain services.
• Someone comments on your Instagram post or reel, optionally only when the comment contains certain words such as "price" or "book".
• A customer has not replied for a set time, or a fixed schedule such as every Monday at 9:00. These two are set up by asking Elly.
• You run it by hand on a conversation, straight from the message box.

What it can check

Between the trigger and the action, an automation can look at anything you know about the customer and the moment: what the message says, whether it has a photo, the customer's name and details, their tags and source, which ad they came from, the deal's stage and value, any extra field you keep, and which message or form triggered it. Combine checks with "and" or "or", and branch: if yes, do this; if no, do that. That is how a lead with a budget above a certain amount goes to the owner while the rest go to the next free colleague, the pattern described in qualifying and routing leads automatically.

What it can do

• Send a WhatsApp message, free text or an approved message, with the customer's name, the appointment time, the staff member and the price filled in automatically.
• Reply to an Instagram comment in public, or send the commenter a private message.
• Start an AI follow-up with a goal you describe.
• Add or remove a label on the conversation, a tag on the customer, or a tag on the deal.
• Set where the customer or the deal came from, and update any extra field.
• Turn the AI on or off for the conversation.
• Move the deal to another stage of your sales pipeline.
• Move the conversation to another inbox, hand it to a team member, or change its priority.

Waiting, and reacting to silence

The step most tools miss is time. An automation in Convelly can wait for minutes, hours or days before the next step. More importantly, it can wait for a reply: it pauses and listens for as long as you decide. If the customer replies, it continues one way. If the time runs out with no reply, it continues another way. This is how "nudge them if they go quiet" happens without anyone having to remember, and it is the difference between an automation and a broadcast, which the guide on WhatsApp broadcasts versus automations explains in detail.

Five automations you can build in minutes

1. A new lead from an Instagram ad arrives. Send a WhatsApp welcome, wait one day for a reply, and if there is none, start an AI follow-up with the goal "book a free consultation".
2. A customer did not show up. Wait two hours, send "we missed you" with a link to rebook, wait two days, and if there is still nothing, tag them and move their deal to Win-back.
3. An appointment is completed. Wait four weeks, then send "time for your next visit?" with a booking link, so the customer can book again the way described in automating appointment booking on WhatsApp.
4. A comment on a reel contains "price". Reply publicly "sent you a message", send the price list privately, and turn the AI on to continue the chat.
5. A customer taps "Talk to a person". Turn the AI off, move the conversation to Front desk, hand it to the next available colleague, and mark it high priority.

Deals are a particularly good starting point. A deal moved to "Quote sent" can start a wait-for-reply flow, and a deal moved to "Won" can send a thank-you and a booking link. Automations that fire when a deal moves collects the patterns that work for service businesses.

Or just tell Elly

You do not have to drag a single step. Tell Elly, your assistant in Convelly, "build an automation that welcomes every new Instagram lead on WhatsApp and follows up after a day if they don't reply", and Elly shows you the whole flow before anything is saved. You approve it, change it with another sentence, or reject it. Elly can also switch automations on or off, run one on a conversation, and report on how they went. The guide to the visual automation builder shows the canvas side for the people who prefer to see every step.

Built to be trusted

Automation that fires half-finished does damage, so Convelly is careful about it. You can save a draft at any time, but turning an automation on checks every step first and tells you exactly what is missing, step by step. Every run is written down: which steps ran, whether the customer replied or the time ran out, what was sent, what was skipped and why. Stop any run with one click. Safety limits set how many times an automation may run for the same customer, add a delay before it starts, and protect against automations triggering each other in a loop. And when one works, copy it to start the next from it.

One set of automations for every channel

Triggers come from WhatsApp and Instagram alike, and the customer behind them is one record whichever channel they wrote on, so an automation built for WhatsApp enquiries does not need to be rebuilt when the same question arrives as an Instagram DM. Building automations that survive a new channel explains how to design them that way from the start. And when an automation runs on your connected business mailbox, a text step goes out as an email.

EasyMenus uses exactly this to confirm restaurant orders in the evening rush:

“

A restaurant at 8 pm can't answer chat messages. Now it doesn't have to — orders confirm themselves.

— Managing Director, EasyMenus

What it costs

Automations are part of every plan; plans differ in how many active automations they include, and there are add-ons for more. Messages the automation sends outside WhatsApp's 24-hour window use approved messages, and any AI follow-up it starts uses your AI credits or your own AI account. Details are on the pricing page.