Every growing business hits the same moment: the WhatsApp number lives on one phone, two people need to answer it, and the phone starts being passed around. Customers get answered twice, or not at all. This is what a shared inbox fixes, and how to move without a gap.
What changes when you move to the API
The WhatsApp Business app and the WhatsApp Business API cannot share a number. Moving means the number leaves the app and lives in the API, where any number of agents can work it from a browser. Three things follow from that:
- Chat history does not migrate. Meta does not move app history into the API. Export it from the app first if you need it.
- You start conversations with templates. After 24 hours of silence, you cannot send free text; you send a Meta-approved template. Replies inside the 24-hour window are free text as usual.
- Every message is a record. Assigned to a person, tagged, timed, and reportable.
Set up in this order
- Connect the number through Meta's sign-up flow. About ten minutes, including business verification if you have not done it.
- Invite the team by email and give each person a role. An agent sees the inbox; a manager also sees reports and settings.
- Decide assignment — unassigned queue for a small team, round-robin once you have three or more agents.
- Set business hours and a first-response target. The SLA clock pauses outside hours, so a message at 11pm is not counted as a breach at 9am.
- Make three tags. Not ten. You will learn what you actually filter on in the first week.
The mistakes to skip
- Everyone answering everything. Assign, even in a team of two. Two replies to one customer looks worse than one slow reply.
- Saving replies nobody uses. Write quick replies from the questions you actually got this week, not the ones you imagine.
- Ignoring the bot for the first month. An out-of-hours bot that says "we open at 10, here are our timings and location" pays for itself immediately and needs no cleverness.
What you get back
The first report that matters is first-response time by agent, by day. It tells you whether the team is keeping up, and it is the number a customer feels even if they never see it.