Continue on WhatsApp

Someone chats with your assistant on your website, asks what something costs, and says “just send me the details, I’ll get back to you.” On the website there is nowhere for that to go — your assistant cannot push a message to a visitor once they close the tab.

Continue on WhatsApp gives them somewhere to go instead. Your assistant offers a button; the visitor taps it, WhatsApp opens with a message already typed, and they press send. On WhatsApp your assistant picks up exactly where the website chat left off and replies with what they asked about — the price, what was discussed, the next step — as an ordinary WhatsApp message, and the conversation carries on there.

It is on by default, wherever it can work. If this assistant has website chat and a working, linked WhatsApp number, it offers this button without you doing anything. An admin can switch it off per assistant. See Switching it off below.

What the visitor sees

Your assistant says something like “So the details reach you and not someone else, tap below to open WhatsApp and press send — the message is ready, and the link works once for 10 minutes.” Under it, a card: Continue on WhatsApp — Opens WhatsApp with a message ready to send. Works once, for 10 minutes.

Tapping it opens WhatsApp to your clinic’s number with a message already typed, something like:

Hi Smile Dental, please send me the details I asked about on your website. Ref K7QM-2XR9

On a computer, the same card also shows a QR code, labelled “Or scan with your phone’s camera.” Scanning it opens WhatsApp on the visitor’s own phone with the identical message the button would have. This is for the common case where someone is chatting with you on a laptop or desktop and their WhatsApp lives on a phone that is not signed in to WhatsApp Web — the button still works if they are, the QR is the way in if they are not. On a phone, the card is the button alone.

The visitor presses send in WhatsApp. That is what proves the number is theirs — your assistant never asks them to type one, so they cannot type a stranger’s by mistake, and it never sees a web address, only the button’s name. Your assistant then replies on WhatsApp with the details, greeting them briefly first, and the conversation continues there like any other WhatsApp conversation.

The website chat shows nothing new after that. It cannot push a notification once the visitor has moved to WhatsApp, so if you are watching the website widget you will not see a “sent” message — the WhatsApp side is where it happens.

⚠️ The button does not survive a page reload. If a visitor refreshes the website chat, the button is gone — the words your assistant said are still there, but the card is not. They can ask again and get a new one.

Why it might not be offered yet

Your assistant only offers this button when a WhatsApp number that routes back to it is actually working — otherwise it would be promising something it cannot deliver. That needs, all at once:

• This assistant has website chat switched on.
• This assistant has a WhatsApp number linked, with an active connector and its number recorded — see Connecting a channel.
• Nobody has switched the offer off for this assistant (see below).

If any of those is missing, your assistant carries on without offering the button — it does not mention WhatsApp and does not show an error. Link a WhatsApp number and the offer starts on the very next website chat, with no other step from you.

Switching it off

Open Bots in your dashboard, choose the assistant, and look under Channels → Web chat for Offer to continue on WhatsApp. Only an admin can change it; everyone else sees it as read-only text.

The line under the switch tells you which state you are in:

What you see	What it means
On — offered on your website chat, using +91 …0009	Working now
On — not offered yet: no WhatsApp number is linked yet (or another reason)	Switched on, but nothing to offer yet — link a number to fix it
Off — your website chat won’t offer WhatsApp	Switched off for this assistant

Turning it off removes the offer immediately; nothing brings it back until an admin turns it back on.

Testing it

Use a phone number that is not on your command-center staff roster to test — a number your team also uses to reply to customers is answered by a person, not by your assistant, and you will not see what a customer sees.

Where the follow-up goes

The clinic gets one lead for this customer, from WhatsApp — not a separate website lead and a separate WhatsApp lead. Your pipeline needs to be turned on to get any lead from a chat conversation at all (see Setting up your pipeline); if it is, the WhatsApp conversation becomes the deal once the thread goes quiet, carrying the website messages along with it.

What it does not do yet

• Customer 360 shows two profiles, not one: the website visitor and the WhatsApp sender, until accounts can be linked. Your assistant still carries the website conversation into its first WhatsApp reply — that part works today — but the two stay separate profiles. See Your customer profiles.
• English only. The prefilled WhatsApp message is not translated.
• One bot on each end. The website chat and the WhatsApp reply are always the same assistant.

Troubleshooting

My assistant never offers the button

Check Switching it off above — the status line names the exact reason. The most common one is a WhatsApp number that is not linked yet, or is linked but its number was never recorded during setup; both are fixed the same way as any other WhatsApp connection issue, in Connecting a channel.

A customer says the link didn’t work

The link works once, and for 10 minutes only — if they tapped it, waited, then tapped it again, the second attempt is a plain message with no code in it, and your assistant answers normally without knowing it was meant to continue anything. Ask them to go back to the website chat and ask again for a new one.

The WhatsApp reply doesn’t mention what was asked on the website

This only carries over for the first reply after the button is used, and only within 24 hours of it. If a person on your team already replied on that WhatsApp thread before your assistant’s turn ran, the website context is not added — the thread already has a human answer in it, and your assistant is not going to contradict what was already said.