A lead messages your business at 9:40 on a Tuesday night. You are asleep, or with a client, or on a train. By the time you reply in the morning, they have already talked to someone else. That gap is where most WhatsApp leads go cold.
A WhatsApp agent closes that gap. It answers on your own number, asks the questions you care about, and keeps notes so the next reply starts from what it already knows. Below is how to set one up for lead qualification, which questions to ask, and where a person needs to step back in.
How do you qualify a WhatsApp lead when you cannot reply in time?
You qualify a lead by asking a short, fixed set of questions in the first conversation and keeping the answers on the contact. An agent can do that the moment a message arrives, at any hour. Blueticks' homepage says the agent "replies to every customer in seconds on your own number" and that it can close a sale "even at 2am." Speed alone does not qualify anyone. The value is that the first conversation runs on your rules, every time, while the lead is still interested.
A typical qualifying flow runs in four beats. The lead says hello. The agent replies right away and asks the first question. The lead answers, and the agent asks the next one. When all three answers are in, the agent saves them to the contact. Each beat takes seconds on the agent's side, and the lead sets the pace on theirs.
Which three questions should an agent ask a new lead?
Three questions are enough to decide whether a lead is worth your time, and short enough that the chat does not feel like a form. Every extra question costs you a lead who gets bored and leaves, so resist the urge to ask for their company size, their location and their referral source in one go. The questions below are examples. You write your own in the agent's instructions.
- Which service are you looking for?
- When do you need it done?
- Roughly what budget do you have in mind?
Write them in plain words, the same way you would brief a new hire. Tell the agent to ask them in order, to ask one at a time, and to save the answers to the contact once all three are in. Keep the questions about fit. Leave pricing, discounts and contract terms to a person, who can say yes or no with context.
How does the agent answer on your own number in seconds?
The agent works from your own WhatsApp number, so the lead sees a reply from the number they already saved. Blueticks runs through WhatsApp Web and its browser extension, as its homepage describes, and the rest of this article follows that setup.
Where the agent runs depends on your plan. On Basic and Standard, the agent runs in your browser. On Pro, it is cloud-hosted and keeps working 24/7. Plan details and current prices are on the Blueticks pricing page, so check them there before you choose.
Consent is still your job. Meta's developer documentation says businesses "are required to obtain opt-in before messaging people on WhatsApp," and that the business must clearly state its name in the opt-in. Message only people who asked to hear from you, and give them a clear way to stop. Blueticks does not guarantee that your number stays in good standing, and no tool can. What you control is who gets messaged and how often.
If you want the agent to qualify your inbound leads on your own number, build your lead-qualifying agent on WhatsApp. It takes a few minutes, and you can test it from a second phone before any real lead sees it.
What does the agent do when a lead is not ready to book?
Most leads are not ready in one conversation. The homepage says the agent keeps "notes and labels on every contact, so the next reply knows them," and that it "checks back on time, so warm leads don't go cold." Those two features do most of the work on the leads that say "not yet."
Here is an illustrative case, with made-up figures so you can see the mechanics. A two-person physiotherapy practice gets about 60 new WhatsApp enquiries a month. Before the agent, the owner replied within a working day, and many enquiries had already booked elsewhere. With an agent asking the three questions, 22 of those 60 answered all three in the first chat. Nine of those 22 booked. The other 13 had a note on the contact, and the agent checked back on the ones who said "next month." Your numbers will differ. The point is the shape: the answers come in before you are awake, and the follow-up does not depend on your memory. The practice owner still closes every booking. The agent just makes sure she only spends her time on leads who answered the questions that matter.
When does a person take over the chat?
The agent hands the chat to your team in the rare cases that need a person, and it tells you when that happens. The homepage says it "knows when a human should step in, and tells you." That is the whole promise. Do not expect a list of exact triggers in this article, because the product page does not publish one.
When you do get the handoff, read the contact notes before you reply. You start from the answers the agent already saved, not from a blank chat.
How do you set up a lead-qualifying agent in the app?
Setup is four steps:
- Create one agent in the app.
- Describe the job in plain words. For example: "Qualify new sales leads. Ask which service they want, when they need it, and their rough budget, one question at a time. Do not quote prices. Save the answers to the contact."
- Set the agent to cover the incoming chats you want it to answer on your business number.
- Send a test message from a second phone. Check the reply, the three questions, and the note saved on the contact.
If the test reply is wrong, change the instructions and test again. Most fixes are one sentence in the description. Run at least three test chats before you trust it. Test one lead who answers everything, one who answers the first question and goes quiet, and one who asks about price straight away. Those three cover most of what a real lead will do, and they show you whether the agent holds the line on pricing the way you wrote it.
What can the agent not do, and what does it cost to run?
Treat the agent as the first reply and the qualifier. It is not the final word on pricing, contracts, refunds or anything that needs judgement about a specific customer. Use it to get the right information into the chat fast, then let a person close.
On cost, the honest answer is that it depends on the plan you pick and how you run it. Basic and Standard run in your browser. Pro runs in the cloud 24/7. Check the pricing page for what each plan includes, rather than relying on any figure in an article, because plans change.
FAQ
Does the agent work when my computer is off? On Basic and Standard, the agent runs in your browser, so it does not replace an always-on setup. On Pro, it runs in the cloud 24/7. The pricing page lists what each plan includes.
Can the agent message people who never contacted me? Meta requires businesses to get opt-in before messaging people on WhatsApp. That obligation is yours. Use the agent for leads who asked to hear from you.
Does the agent remember earlier conversations? Each contact gets notes and labels, so later replies have context. The homepage describes this as notes and labels on every contact.
When does a person take over? In the rare cases that need a person, the agent hands the chat to your team and tells you. The product page does not list exact triggers.
Does this use WhatsApp Web? Yes. Blueticks runs on your own WhatsApp number through WhatsApp Web and its browser extension, as its homepage describes. This article does not cover a separate official API integration with a provider.
Do I need to write the questions myself? You can start from the three examples above and change the wording to match how your customers talk. Keep the number at three until you have data on which questions get answered.
