On this page
Quick replies are saved answers your team inserts into any conversation by typing a forward slash or pressing the lightning button, with the customer's name and details filled in automatically. You create and manage them yourself, either for the whole team or just for you, from Settings on the web or from the Android app.
Quick replies: first 5 of 10 steps
- 1Open Settings, then Quick replies
- 2Click New quick reply
- 3Type the shortcut
- 4Write the title and the message
- 5Choose who can use it and save
Before you start
- Quick replies are available on every plan, including Free, and work in every channel the inbox supports: WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and your website chat widget.
- Anyone who can send messages (the "Send messages" permission) can insert quick replies and create personal ones that only they see.
- Team-wide quick replies are created, edited and deleted by owners, admins and supervisors, or by a custom role that has the manage quick replies permission.
- On Android, creating and editing quick replies needs app version 3.0.2 or later. Earlier versions can still insert the team's quick replies.
- A quick reply fills the message box; it never sends on its own. Outside the 24-hour customer service window WhatsApp only accepts approved templates, so see sending a template from the inbox for that case.
- If what you want is an answer that goes out automatically when a customer sends a word like "price", that is a keyword flow rather than a quick reply. See build your first flow.
Steps
- Open Settings, then Quick replies. On the web it sits in the Workspace group of the Settings menu. On Android open More, then Settings, then Quick replies. In any chat you can also press the lightning button next to the message box and click New, or click Manage to jump to this page.
- Click New quick reply. The form asks for a shortcut, a title, the message, an optional category, and who can use it.
- Type the shortcut. This is what you will type after the slash, for example "price". Letters, numbers, underscores and hyphens are kept; spaces become underscores and anything else is dropped, and the form shows the shortcut exactly as it will be saved. Each shortcut can belong to only one quick reply in the workspace.
- Write the title and the message. The title is what teammates see in the list, such as "Price list". In the message, use the variable chips under the box to insert {{name}}, {{first_name}}, {{phone}}, {{email}} or {{agent_name}}. Where a blank would read badly, add a fallback after a pipe: "Hi {{name|there}}" becomes "Hi there" for a contact with no name. A live preview under the message shows the result with a sample contact.
- Choose who can use it and save. Whole team makes it available to everyone who can send messages. Only me keeps it in your own list. Optionally add a category such as Sales or Delivery so the Settings list groups related replies together. Click Save quick reply.
- Insert it in a conversation. Open a chat, click into the message box and type a forward slash followed by part of the shortcut or title, for example "/pri". Or press the lightning button to see the full list.
- Pick the reply. Up and down arrows move through the list, Enter or Tab inserts the highlighted one, and Esc closes the list without deleting what you typed. Clicking a row works too. The variables are filled in for this customer as the text lands in the message box.
- Review and send. Edit anything specific to this customer, then press send as usual.
- Save a good answer as you write it. When you have typed a reply worth keeping, press the lightning button and choose Save this draft as a quick reply. The form opens with your text in the message field.
- Edit or delete from the same Settings page. Click the pencil to change a reply, or the bin to delete it. Deleting removes it from your workspace for everyone who could see it; messages already sent are not affected, and the shortcut becomes free to use again.
Why a slash shortcut instead of a menu
A quick reply is only useful if reaching for it is faster than typing the answer. The search lives in the message box itself, so an agent who remembers the shortcut types a slash and two or three letters and presses Enter without touching the mouse. The lightning button is there for the moments you do not remember the shortcut, and for browsing the list on a phone.
Example
A clinic's front desk gets the same three questions all day: "What are your timings", "Do I need to book in advance" and "Where are you located". Three team-wide quick replies with the shortcuts "timings", "booking" and "location" mean an agent answers each by typing "/tim", "/book" or "/loc" and pressing Enter, instead of retyping the same paragraph fifteen times in a shift. Each one starts "Hi {{first_name|there}}", so the greeting is personal when the name is known and still reads naturally when it is not.
Because team-wide quick replies are shared, a new teammate has every answer the team has already written from their first shift. Personal quick replies sit alongside them for the phrasing an individual agent likes to use, without cluttering everyone else's list.
What you will see
The Settings page has two tabs, Whole team and Only me, a search box, and the quick replies grouped by category. Each row shows the shortcut in a small pill, the title, the start of the message and how many times it has been used. Rows you are allowed to change have edit and delete buttons; team-wide rows are read-only for teammates without the manage permission.
In a chat, typing a slash or pressing the lightning button opens a list above the message box with up to eight matches, the most used first. A teammate's change shows up in an open chat within a second, on the web and on Android, without reloading the page. If the workspace has no quick replies yet, the list says so and offers New.
Settings and options
| Setting or behaviour | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Shortcut | What you type after the slash. Letters, numbers, _ and -, up to 30 characters, unique in the workspace | Required |
| Title | The name shown in the list | Required, up to 80 characters |
| Message | The text inserted into the message box | Required, up to 4,096 characters |
| Category | Groups related replies on the Settings page | None |
| Who can use it | Whole team (everyone who can send messages) or Only me | Whole team for owners, admins and supervisors; Only me for everyone else |
| Variables | {{name}}, {{first_name}}, {{phone}}, {{email}}, {{agent_name}} | Filled when inserted |
| Fallbacks | A word after a pipe inside the braces is used when the value is empty, as in the step above | None, an empty value becomes blank |
| Picker order | Most used first, then alphabetical | Always on |
| Keyboard | Up and down move, Enter or Tab inserts, Esc closes | Always on |
| Limit | Quick replies per workspace, team-wide and personal together | 500 |
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| "The shortcut is already in use" when saving | Another quick reply in the workspace has that shortcut, possibly a teammate's personal one | Choose a different shortcut; deleting the other quick reply frees it |
| Whole team cannot be selected | Only owners, admins and supervisors create team-wide quick replies | Save it as Only me, or ask an admin to create the shared version |
| The message went out with a blank where the name should be | The contact has no name on file and the variable has no fallback | Edit the quick reply to add a fallback after the variable name (see step 4), or add the name to the contact |
| Typing a slash shows "No quick replies match" | The letters typed do not appear in any shortcut or title | Try a shorter part of the shortcut, or press the lightning button to see the full list |
| The Android app has no Quick replies screen in Settings | The app is older than version 3.0.2 | Update the app from Google Play; inserting quick replies keeps working meanwhile |
| A quick reply a teammate mentioned is not in your list | It is their personal quick reply | Ask them to make it team-wide, or have an admin create it for the team |
Related reading
Quick replies work inside the 24-hour messaging window; once that window closes, see sending a template from the inbox for how the composer switches to Meta-approved templates. For answers that go out automatically, without an agent in the loop, see build your first flow, and for organising conversations around these replies, see tags, notes and stages.