When a customer asks you to stop

Your assistant chases. It sends a WhatsApp message after a quiet week, calls after two, and keeps a deal warm while you get on with the work. That is the point of it.

The other half of that promise is knowing when to stop — and not because you remembered to switch something off. A customer who says “please stop sending me offers” is told, from that moment, by the same assistant that was chasing them. Every follow-up stops. Nobody has to notice, tick a box, or tell the team.

This matters more on WhatsApp than anywhere else. When people block a business or report it, Meta lowers that number’s quality rating, then cuts how many people it can message, and eventually bans it. That is your number. Honouring a stop is not politeness — it is the thing that keeps the channel working at all.

⚠️ Once someone opts out, only they can undo it. There is no button on any screen, for anyone, including us. If they want your messages again they reply START. The rest of this page explains why, because your team will ask.

The four things a customer can say

Your customer does not need to know a keyword. Writing “stop” is enough, and so is “please take me off your list”. Four outcomes are possible:

They write	What stops	What still arrives
STOP — also unsubscribe, opt out, stop offers, no more promotions	Promotions: follow-up chases, re-engagement, promotional calls	Order, booking and payment updates
STOP ALL — also leave me alone, don’t contact me, remove me, stop messaging me	Everything	Nothing
START	—	Order and booking updates come back on
START ALL	—	Everything comes back on

A plain STOP stops promotions only. That surprises people who expect STOP to mean everything, so it is worth understanding: a customer who has just paid you and then silently stops receiving their delivery updates has been badly served, and they will rarely connect it to a word they sent last week. The milder mistake wins — and the customer is told immediately how to go further.

They are also not restricted to English. Malayalam, Manglish, Hindi and Hinglish phrasings are recognised too — and an emoji after the word changes nothing, which matters more than it sounds: STOP 🛑 and STOP ⛔️ are the same request.

Tapping counts as well as typing. WhatsApp attaches its own Stop promotions button to promotional templates, and a tap on it is read exactly like a typed STOP. So does a voice note: your assistant transcribes it and reads the words.

WhatsApp also has its own marketing-messages setting, in the customer’s own account — separate from any conversation with you — and honouring it is not optional. If someone turns it off there, that counts too: it stops promotions for your business the same as if they had typed STOP. Turning it back on there, though, only brings back order and booking updates — it will not undo a STOP ALL they told you directly. That one still needs the customer to reply START to you, because a setting inside WhatsApp is not the same as them telling your business they want everything back.

⚠️ A “no” to your offer is not an opt-out, and is deliberately not treated as one. Venda, nahi, “not right now”, “maybe next month” — those close a deal, not a channel. Your assistant reads them as an answer and stops chasing that deal; the customer stays contactable.

What they get back, straight away

The reply is automatic and immediate. After a plain STOP:

Got it — you won’t receive any more marketing or promotional messages from {your business name}. You’ll still get updates about your orders and bookings. Reply STOP ALL to stop those too.

That message is doing real work. It is the only place a customer ever learns that STOP ALL exists, which is what makes the narrow reading of STOP fair. If it cannot be delivered — for example, the conversation has been taken over by one of your team and the automatic reply is held back — the opt-out is widened to everything instead. If we cannot explain ourselves, we go quiet.

On your website chat widget the same reply appears in the conversation itself, above the assistant’s answer, since there is no message to send them afterwards.

It counts wherever they said it

An opt-out is recorded against the person, not the phone number, the thread, or the channel. Someone who says stop on WhatsApp will not get a promotional Instagram message the next day, and will not get a sales call either.

Order updates work slightly differently: those are per channel, so “stop sending me WhatsApp order updates” does not silence an Instagram conversation they are actively using.

And it is per business. Opting out of your messages says nothing about any other Kooday customer’s.

Where you see it

The Opted out screen

Opted out in the left-hand menu lists everyone who has asked you to stop, newest first, with what they actually said, on which channel, and how you came to know:

Column	What it tells you
Stopped	Promotions or Everything
Told us on	The channel the request arrived on
How	They typed it, From the conversation, Their WhatsApp settings, or Recorded by your team
What they said	Their own words, verbatim

The number above the table is the count from the last 7 days, next to the change against the week before. That is the number worth watching. A total only ever grows; a jump from 2 to 9 in a week is the earliest warning you will get that your follow-ups are landing badly — well before Meta says anything about it.

Export CSV downloads whatever the filters are currently showing. Use it if you send anything from another tool: an opt-out honoured in Kooday and ignored in your own mailer buys you nothing, because the block still lands on your number.

In the Inbox, before anyone types

An opted-out customer’s conversation carries a chip — No promotions or Opted out of everything — in the list and again above the thread, with a line saying what it means for the message being composed:

They asked you to stop promotions. Answering them is fine; offers and follow-ups are not.

This one is aimed squarely at your team. Kooday will not initiate a message to someone who opted out, but replying inside a live conversation is always allowed — they wrote to you, so of course you answer. Which means a person typing a cheerful “by the way, we have a deal on this week” is the one thing the software cannot block. The chip is there so nobody does it by accident.

The one case where a customer asks and gets no answer

There is a single exception, and it only affects people who sent STOP ALL.

WhatsApp lets you reply freely for 24 hours after a customer’s last message. After that the only thing anyone — you, us, any business on WhatsApp — may send is an approved template, and sending one is initiating contact even when it is prompted by a question. Someone who asked you to stop everything has asked you not to do that. So if they write in more than 24 hours after their previous message, the automatic reply is held back. Their message still lands in your Inbox — you can see it and decide what to do; the same rule applies to anything you send by hand.

Everyone else is answered. A customer who sent a plain STOP stopped your promotions, not your support: they can ask a question days later and your assistant replies as normal. That is the point of the narrow reading of STOP.

”Stopped chasing” and “opted out” are not the same thing

These look similar on screen and mean very different things. Getting them confused is the most common mistake here.

	Your assistant stopped chasing a deal	The customer opted out
What happened	They said no, or went quiet for three follow-ups	They asked you to stop messaging them
Scope	That one deal	Every deal, every channel, and calls
Who can undo it	You — carry on messaging them whenever you like	Only they can, by replying START
Where you see it	The deal, on your pipeline board	The Opted out screen

A customer who says “we went with someone else” has closed a deal, not a relationship. They are still a customer you can call next quarter. A customer who says “stop messaging me” is not, and treating the two the same in either direction is a real error: one loses you business, the other costs you your number.

Your assistant also stops chasing after three follow-ups with no reply, and puts a note on your board rather than a fourth message. That is a pause on a deal, not a consent record — it never appears on the Opted out screen. The full list of things that stop a chase is in When does your assistant follow up?.

Why there is no undo

Adding someone to the list is a click. Taking them off is impossible, for anyone.

That asymmetry is deliberate, and it is a feature rather than a limitation. The whole value of the list is that a customer’s decision cannot be talked around later — by a keen salesperson, by an urgent campaign, or by a support request. If any of those could clear it, the list would be a suggestion, and everyone involved would know it.

So when a customer phones and says they would like your messages again, tell them to reply START to your WhatsApp number. That is not us passing the work back to them; it is the only record that proves they asked.

Recording a stop you heard elsewhere

Customers tell you to stop in person, on a call, or by email — none of which Kooday can hear. Those can be recorded too, with the customer’s own words, so the rest of the platform honours them exactly like a typed STOP. They appear on the list as Recorded by your team, which is the one origin nobody argues with.

Use Record an opt-out on the Opted out screen: pick the customer, say where they told you, and write down their words. If they were already opted out of promotions somewhere else, the platform reads a second stop as stop everything — the screen tells you plainly when that happens, so you know order updates have stopped too.

Stops spoken to the assistant on a call are also picked up: after the call ends, the assistant reads the conversation back and records a clear “stop calling me” on its own, with the customer’s words as the evidence. Treat that as a backstop rather than a guarantee — phrasing and line quality vary — and record it yourself when a customer tells a person.

The same rule applies the moment it is recorded: nobody can take it off again. Only record one when you are sure.

Troubleshooting

A customer says they opted out, but they are not on the list

Check what they actually sent. A message has to be substantially the request itself — “stop”, “stop sending me offers” — rather than a sentence with it buried inside. Your assistant also reads plainer phrasings from the conversation itself, but that is a second net rather than the guarantee, and it does not run while one of your team is holding the thread.

If they told a person rather than the assistant, add it yourself — see above.

They are on the list but still got a message from us

Two possibilities, and only one of them is a fault.

1. They opted out of promotions and this was an order update. That is the design. Check the Stopped column: Promotions means order, booking and payment updates keep flowing. If they want those to stop too, they reply STOP ALL.
2. Somebody on your team replied by hand. Replying in a live conversation is always allowed. If the reply included an offer, that is the gap this page’s chip is meant to close.

Someone was opted out by mistake

You cannot remove them, and there is no workaround. Ask them to reply START (order updates only) or START ALL (everything).

If it keeps happening, look at the What they said column: it holds their exact words, which is usually enough to see what was misread.

Kooday refused to place a call I dialled myself

If the number is on your Do not call list, or the customer told you to stop everything, the platform will not dial it — even from the “Call now” button, and even though a person pressed it. That is the point of the list: it is the moment it means something.

A customer who only stopped promotions can still be called about their order or booking. If you think a refusal is wrong, check the Opted out screen and your Do not call list; one of the two has their number.

A customer replied START and still hears nothing from us

Their number is probably on your Do not call list, which is your own record, not theirs — so START cannot lift it, and the assistant tells them so rather than pretending it worked. A number on that list is blocked for promotions on every channel and for calls of any kind.

Take them off the Do not call list yourself, and the reply they already sent stands. This is the one case where the undo is yours: they never put themselves on that list, so removing them is not overriding a customer’s decision.

Our follow-ups have stopped for everyone, not one customer

That is a different problem — most likely the follow-up template. See Why your follow-ups need their own template.