In 2020, a new policy of Facebook messenger platform and WhatsApp Business was applied. Everybody who uses these platforms needs to comply with the new policy.
Overview of the new policy
- Only a client can start a new conversation with a company. Companies can only reply to clients' messages.
- Companies have up to 24 hours to respond to a client. This change aligns with people’s expectations of faster responses from businesses.
- If more than 24 hours have passed since the last message from a client, it means that the client has finished the conversation.
How it works in Bitrix24
Some of the Bitrix24 open channels use Facebook Messenger Platform and WhatsApp Business. To comply with the new policy, we have made some changes to WhatsApp, Instagram Direct and Facebook Messages open channels:
- If an agent has replied to a client, but the client hasn't sent any messages within 24 hours after getting a reply, the agent will receive an error when sending a new message that the message was not delivered. In this case, the agent can either end the dialogue or wait for the client to respond.
- If the client writes again to this chat, the agent can continue the dialogue with the client within 24 hours since the last client contact.
- Agent's answers or auto-messages of the open channel have no effect on the "24 hours answer window" time. Only client's answers have an effect.
- Message Tags are not supported.
You can increase the correspondence time from 24 hours to 7 days in Facebook:Messages and Instagram Direct channels, but with some content limits for such messages. Read more here.