WhatsApp Business after-hours calls: an away message for calls

In the WhatsApp Business app, you can set business hours on your profile and turn on an away message. WhatsApp’s help centre lists three schedules: always send, a custom schedule, or outside of business hours, which needs business hours on your profile. You also choose who receives it, and the phone needs an internet connection to send it.

All of this is about messages. When someone calls your number at 21:00, nothing tells them you are closed. The phone rings, and if nobody picks up, the call ends.

Meta’s Business Calling API has its own call hours setting, with weekly hours, a time zone and up to 20 holiday dates. According to Meta’s documentation, user-initiated calls are unavailable outside those hours, and WhatsApp can offer the customer a choice to chat or request a callback instead. That stops calls rather than answering them, which is fine for some businesses and a lost sale for others.

Choose what each caller gets based on what they usually want.

• AI agent: answers, confirms orders, books appointments and creates callbacks for the morning
• Message: tells callers when you reopen and where to find answers
• Voicemail: catches a message for the team to return
• On-call team: rings a smaller group of agents for urgent calls
• Callback: you call back once the customer accepts a call permission request, as Meta requires

Dialaunch connects your WhatsApp Business number through Meta’s WhatsApp Business Platform and puts it in a call flow you design. Opening hours with holidays and time zones decide what each call gets. During the day, calls can ring your team, wait in a queue with hold music or go through a keypad menu. Outside those hours, they go to the AI agent, a message, voicemail or an on-call team.

The AI agent answers in any language your customers speak, from your own information, and says it is an AI. It confirms orders, books appointments in Google Calendar, checks deliveries and creates callbacks, so the evening caller gets a result, not a closed sign. Every call has a summary and an outcome waiting for the team in the morning.

If you serve customers in different countries, set opening hours in the right time zone and add holidays per calendar. The Business plan includes 3 WhatsApp numbers, and extra numbers are €29 a month, so each location or market can have its own number.

Settle these points and your after-hours setup is ready.

• Write down your weekly hours, holidays and time zone
• Decide what after-hours callers get: AI agent, message, voicemail or on-call team
• List what the AI agent may do on its own, such as bookings and order confirmations
• Choose who follows up callbacks in the morning
• Keep your away message for chats, with the same hours