Your first week
An ordered checklist for the first few days — what to do on day one, what can wait, and the two things that are much cheaper to get right before customers arrive.
The order below is not arbitrary. Two of these steps are much cheaper before customers start messaging than after, and they are first for that reason.
Day one
1. Connect your WhatsApp number. How. If someone currently answers on the WhatsApp Business app, read coexistence first — that choice is made during sign-up and cannot be changed afterwards.
2. Check your templates arrived. Open Message templates. A number that has been in business use brings its approved templates with it. If the list is empty, run Sync and read the error — an empty list means nobody outside a 24-hour window can be reached.
3. Send yourself three messages. From a phone that is not the business number: send a text, reply from the inbox, then send a photo from the inbox. Each proves a different thing, and the photo is the one that catches a missing media configuration — worth finding on day one, because WhatsApp expires media after about 30 days.
4. Invite the people who will answer. Members and roles. Agent for full-timers, Front Desk for anyone covering a shift.
The rest of the first week
5. Write down what you actually get asked. Opening hours, prices, delivery, parking, whether you carry a thing. Ten questions, honestly answered, is the entire input the AI assistant needs to be useful. This is the highest-value hour in the whole list and the one people skip.
6. Add three canned replies. The three answers your team types most often. Type / in the composer to use one.
7. Agree on status and labels with your team. Not what the buttons do — what your team means by them. See conversation status. A shared inbox where two people mean different things by "pending" is a list, not a queue.
8. Turn on trusted devices if more than two people can sign in. Security.
9. Put your WhatsApp somewhere people will find it. A QR code on the counter, a link in your bio, a button on the site. A channel nobody knows about produces no conversations to answer.
What can wait
Deliberately not on the list, because they are better decided after a week of real conversations:
- Automation rules. Write them for problems you have seen, not for problems you imagine.
- Broadcasts. Send nothing to a list until you know your opt-in is sound. A bad first campaign costs you the number's quality rating.
- Letting the assistant reply on its own. Watch its drafts for a few days first. You will find out what it does not know, and that list is what step 5 was really for.
- Reports. A week of data does not mean anything yet.
How you know it worked
By the end of the week: a customer message reaches the right person within minutes, that person can see everything said before, and nobody is checking a second phone.