WhatsApp Greeting Message, Away Message and Quick Replies: Setup Guide with Examples
A customer messages your shop at 9:40 pm. Nobody answers until morning. By then they have already asked two other stores. Most small businesses do not lose customers because their product is weak; they lose them in the gap between "hello" and the first reply.
WhatsApp gives you three simple tools to close that gap: a **greeting message**, an **away message** and **quick replies**. This guide shows how each one works, what to write, and when you have outgrown them and need real automation.
What Each Tool Does
Greeting message. An automatic first reply sent when a new customer messages you, or when someone returns after a long gap. In the WhatsApp Business app, it is sent to customers who have not chatted with you for about two weeks.
Away message. An automatic reply sent when you are not available, for example outside business hours or on a holiday. You can send it always, on a custom schedule or only outside the hours you set in your business profile.
Quick replies. Saved answers you trigger by typing a slash and a keyword, such as /price or /address. Your staff write the answer once and reuse it, so every customer gets the same accurate reply.
These are features of the WhatsApp Business app. The API does not have the same built-in settings screen, so on the API the same job is done by an auto-reply and automation setup, which we cover near the end.
How to Set Up a Greeting Message
In the WhatsApp Business app, open the settings, go to business tools and choose greeting message. Switch it on, write your text and choose who receives it, either everyone or selected contacts.
A good greeting does three things in a few lines: it names your business, tells the customer what you can help with, and sets an expectation about reply time. Avoid a long paragraph. People read these on a lock screen.
Retail store example: "Hello, thanks for messaging Sharma Electronics. Tell us the product you are looking for and we will share the price and availability. We usually reply within 30 minutes during shop hours."
Salon example: "Hi, welcome to Glow Studio. To book an appointment, please send your preferred service, date and time. We will confirm shortly."
Clinic example: "Hello, this is the front desk of City Care Clinic. For appointments, send your name and preferred time. For emergencies, please call the clinic directly."
The business names above are only examples. Replace them with your own and keep the promise on reply time something your team can actually keep.
How to Set Up an Away Message
The away message is in the same business tools menu. Pick one of three schedules: always send, custom schedule, or outside business hours. The last one is the most useful for shops because it follows the opening hours already set in your business profile. Update those hours first, or the message will fire at the wrong time.
Restaurant example: "Thanks for your message. We are closed right now and open again at 11 am. You can see our menu here and leave your order request. We will respond when we open."
Coaching class example: "Our office is closed for today. Please share your name, the class you are interested in and your phone number, and our counsellor will call you tomorrow."
The most useful away messages do not only say "we are closed". They ask the customer for the details you need so that the morning reply can be a real answer, not a question. This one habit saves a full back-and-forth for every after-hours enquiry.
How to Set Up Quick Replies
Open business tools and choose quick replies, then add a new one. Write the full message and assign a shortcut. Later, typing a slash in any chat shows your list.
Start with the five questions your team answers most often. For most businesses these are:
/address with the full shop address, a landmark and the Google Maps link.
/hours with opening hours and weekly off day.
/price with a short price list or a link to your catalogue.
/payment with accepted payment methods and the UPI details to be used.
/thanks with a polite closing message and a request to share feedback.
Write quick replies in the same tone as your greeting. If one reply is formal and the next is casual, customers notice. Also review them every few months; an outdated address or price in a saved reply is a quiet way to lose trust.
Tips That Make These Messages Work
Keep them short. Aim for a few lines. A long message looks like spam and often gets ignored.
Use the customer's language. If most of your customers write in Hindi, Marathi or Gujarati, offer the message in that language too. Our WhatsApp text formatter helps you add bold and italic styling so the key detail stands out.
Give one clear next step. "Reply with your pin code" works better than "let us know how we can help".
Do not promise what you cannot deliver. Saying "we reply in five minutes" and then replying in five hours is worse than saying nothing.
Test it yourself. Message your own business number from another phone, at the right time, and see exactly what a customer sees.
When These Tools Are Not Enough
The app's built-in replies are fixed text. They cannot look at what the customer wrote, route the chat to the right person, or reply differently to different questions. Once you are handling more than a few dozen chats a day, or several staff share the number, you will feel the limit.
On the WhatsApp Business API with VedLink AI, you can set auto-reply triggers that react to keywords, an AI chatbot that answers common questions from your own business information, and a shared team inbox where chats are assigned to the right person. The welcome and after-hours messages still exist, but they become the first step of a flow, not the whole conversation.
If you are not sure which product suits you, our guide on the WhatsApp Business API vs the WhatsApp Business app explains the difference in plain language.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the greeting message cost anything? On the WhatsApp Business app, no. Costs on the API depend on the type of message, so see our pricing explainer.
Will the away message reply to every message? It is designed to reply once in a while, not to every single message in a long chat, so customers do not receive repeated replies.
Can I set different greetings for different customers? In the app you can choose selected contacts, but the text remains the same. For truly different replies, you need automation.
Can staff on different phones use the same quick replies? Quick replies are saved per device in the app. A shared inbox keeps one common set for the whole team.
The Bottom Line
Write one clear greeting, one helpful away message and five quick replies this week. It takes under an hour and means no customer waits in silence again. When you outgrow them, see our plans or book a demo to move to automation that works around the clock.