← Help center

Follow up automatically when a customer goes quiet

Follow-ups are short messages your assistant sends when a customer stops replying after your last message. You decide how many there are and how long each one waits. Your assistant writes each message from the conversation, so it reads like a natural nudge rather than a fixed text.

Set up follow-ups

Owners and admins open Assistant → Playbooks, select a playbook and use the Follow-ups & quiet hours card above the phase list. Under Follow-ups, click + Add step for each message you want, up to 10:

• After: how long the customer has been silent since your last message, in minutes, hours or days. Each step waits from 5 minutes up to 7 days, and at least 5 minutes after the step before it. For example: 30 minutes, 4 hours, 22 hours.
• Guidance (optional): what this follow-up should mention, such as "remind them the trial ends Friday", or longer instructions saying what to write in each situation, up to 5,000 characters. Your assistant still follows your playbook and phase instructions.
• WhatsApp template (WhatsApp senders only): the approved template to send for this step once the 24-hour window has closed. See Messaging windows below.

On a playbook with a WhatsApp sender, the steps show a reminder to add a payment method in Meta, with an Add payment method in Meta link: Meta doesn't deliver templates from a WhatsApp Business Account without one (see whatsapp-payment-method).

Click Save. The settings apply to every sender using this playbook. The Consultant can propose follow-up changes too (see consultant-proposals).

When follow-ups are sent

The countdown starts from your side's last message: an assistant reply, a team member's reply from the Inbox or the WhatsApp Business app, or a phase's opening message. Templates and the follow-ups themselves do not restart it, and neither does a private reply to an Instagram comment: a comment opens no messaging window, so no follow-up could be sent after it.

• When the customer writes back, the remaining follow-ups are canceled. Your next message starts a new sequence from step 1.
• Your assistant can decide a follow-up is not appropriate (for example, the customer already said goodbye) and stop the sequence instead of sending it.
• Follow-ups never go out during quiet hours (see quiet-hours). A step due at night goes out a little early or the next morning. When several steps fall in the same night, only the latest one is sent in the morning.
• The sequence ends without sending if, when a step is due, the conversation is escalated, auto-replies are paused for it, your assistant is working through a checklist with the customer, or the customer opted out of scheduled follow-ups (see contact-preferences).
• A step due while a reply is held for quiet hours waits until that reply goes out (see quiet-hours); the reply then starts a new sequence.
• If the message cannot be delivered, Yapper tries again a minute later, a few times. When the platform refuses it outright, the sequence ends.

See and stop follow-ups in the Inbox

In the Inbox, each follow-up your assistant sent is labeled Follow-up 1/3, Follow-up 2/3 and so on above the message, with · template when it went out as a WhatsApp template.

While a follow-up is waiting to go out, the conversation shows Next follow-up under the Auto-reply switch, with its time and step, such as "Next follow-up 09:00 · step 2/3". It is not shown while the conversation is escalated or auto-replies are paused for it, since no follow-up goes out then. Click Stop follow-ups to cancel the rest of this sequence for that customer. Nothing else changes: the next message you or your assistant send starts a new sequence from step 1, as usual. To keep your assistant from following up at all, pause auto-replies for the conversation instead.

Messaging windows

WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger only let a business send a free-form message within 24 hours of the customer's last message. On Instagram and Messenger a comment does not count: the window runs from the customer's last direct message. Follow-ups respect this:

• On WhatsApp, a step due after the window has closed is sent as its WhatsApp template instead, if you picked one, at its time (or when quiet hours end). Templates sent this way are charged by WhatsApp like any other template (see whatsapp-templates). A step without a template is skipped. If the template is not approved, needs values Yapper can't fill, or the customer opted out of templates, the step is skipped too; the template picker explains why under the step.
• On Instagram and Messenger, steps past the window are skipped.
• Web chat has no window, so every step is sent.

To keep a step inside the window, Yapper may send it a little before its time: when it is due shortly after the window closes, or when the window would close during quiet hours. How much earlier follows the same Stretch setting as quiet hours (see quiet-hours).

Preview the schedule

Under the steps, a table shows when each step would go out if the customer stays silent: for a last message at 10:00, 19:00 and 23:30, on WhatsApp, Instagram/Messenger and web chat. Each cell shows the time (+1d is the next day) and why: on time, a little early, after quiet hours, last call (just before the window closes), as template, merged into the next step, or skipped. Times use the time zone of a sender on the playbook, or your browser's when none has one. The table updates as you edit, before you save.

See how follow-ups perform

Stats shows a Follow-up reply rate table: for each step, how many were sent and how many customers replied before the next step went out (within 7 days). See stats.

Different follow-ups for one phase

In a phase's settings, Follow-ups offers Use playbook default, Off or Custom. Custom shows the same step editor, and its steps replace the playbook's while a customer is in that phase. Off sends no follow-ups in that phase. When a customer moves to another phase, the running sequence ends; the new phase's opening message starts a new one. See phases.

A phase that moves customers on after a set time (inactivity or time in phase) ends the sequence when it does. If a step waits longer than that, it never goes out: the step editor shows a warning under the steps, in the phase's settings and on the playbook's Follow-ups & quiet hours card for each phase using the playbook's steps. You can still save.