Answering WhatsApp calls

WhatsApp shows a call button on a business number. Until now, pressing it on your number did nothing useful. Your assistant can now answer it — the same assistant, with the same knowledge, the same persona and the same voice it uses on the phone, reached without anyone dialling a number or paying for a call.

For a customer already messaging you on WhatsApp, this is the shortest path there is from “I have a question” to somebody answering it. They never leave the app.

Your assistant does not call people on WhatsApp. This works in one direction only: a customer rings you. There is no way to place an outbound WhatsApp call from Kooday, and nothing on this page changes that.

What you need before you start

Four things, and the setup below walks through the two you control:

	Where it lives
A Starter plan or above	WhatsApp is not included on Lite.
A WhatsApp number connected to Kooday	Connecting a channel
An assistant with both WhatsApp and voice switched on	The Channels card on Bots
Calling switched on for the number	Integrations, on the connector — below

Switching it on

Open Integrations, then the WhatsApp connector for the number you want. Beside the number’s status you will find a Calling on WhatsApp panel with a single Turn on button.

Press it and two things happen: the call button becomes visible to your customers in WhatsApp, and Kooday subscribes to the call events Meta sends. The panel reads the setting back from Meta each time you open it, so what you see is what Meta has — not what Kooday last remembers writing.

This is the same setting as the one in WhatsApp Manager. Changing it here changes it there, and vice versa.

⚠️ The button can be turned on with nothing behind it. A number can be enabled for calling at Meta while the call events never reach Kooday. Then the customer’s call rings, and rings, and nobody answers. If that has happened the panel says so — “This WhatsApp Business Account is not receiving call events, so calls would ring without reaching Kooday” — and pressing Turn on tries to repair it.

If the button is greyed out

You will see a line naming the assistant behind the connector and saying it needs both WhatsApp and voice enabled. That gate is deliberate: with either channel off the call is declined the moment it arrives, so switching the button on would advertise a number that hangs up on people.

Fix it on the Bots page — open that assistant, find the Channels card, and switch both WhatsApp and Voice on. Then come back.

Turning calling off is never blocked. If you have just switched voice off, you can still take the call button down.

What the caller experiences

They press the call button in WhatsApp. Your assistant answers, says its opening line and the conversation runs exactly as a phone call does — same voice, same knowledge, same ability to look things up and act.

The caller hangs up in WhatsApp rather than on a phone keypad, and your assistant can end the call itself the same way it does on the phone.

Afterwards the call appears on your Calls page badged WhatsApp, with its transcript, its summary and its cost, sitting alongside your phone calls. It is a real call and it is billed like one — see Calls, transcripts and recordings.

Recording

WhatsApp calls are recorded on exactly the same terms as phone calls: your bot’s Recording switch, and — since 31 August 2026 — only once Tell callers the call is recorded is on too. Nothing is captured while your callers are not being told. The full explanation is in Calls, transcripts and recordings.

Troubleshooting

The call button doesn’t appear in WhatsApp

Open Integrations → the connector, and look at Calling on WhatsApp. If it reads off, press Turn on. If it reads on and your customers still see no button, give WhatsApp a few minutes and check on a phone that has not opened that chat recently — the app caches what it knows about a business.

It rings and rings and nobody answers

This is the case the panel warns about above: calling is on at Meta but the call events are not reaching Kooday. Open the connector and read the Calling on WhatsApp panel — if it is showing the “not receiving call events” line, press Turn on to repair the subscription.

The call is answered and immediately dropped

Kooday declined it. Working down the causes, most common first:

1. The assistant has WhatsApp or voice switched off. The commonest by far, and the same gate that greys out the button. Check the Channels card.
2. Your plan does not include WhatsApp or voice. See Billing.
3. You are already on as many calls as your plan allows. The next caller is declined rather than queued; this is the same limit your phone calls use.
4. Your included minutes are used up, or a prepaid balance has run out.

The Calls page will not show a row for a call declined at this stage — the call never started, so there is nothing to log.

Nobody has called and I want to test it

Ring your own WhatsApp number from a different phone. There is no test button for this — a WhatsApp call has to come from WhatsApp — and a call you place yourself is a real call, logged and billed like any other.

I want my assistant to call customers on WhatsApp

It cannot, and this is not a setting. WhatsApp calling in Kooday is inbound only.

Where to go from here

• Connecting a channel — getting the number onto Kooday in the first place
• Calls, transcripts and recordings — what you get after the call
• Why isn’t my assistant live? — when nothing is answering anywhere