How to build a WhatsApp chatbot without code: ten steps from the first question to week two

Akash Rathi sells electric scooters from two showrooms in Indore, one in Vijay Nagar and one near Bhawarkua, with nine staff, four of them in sales. The number on his hoardings gets about forty chats a day, and most ask one of the same five things. His salespeople answer between test rides, so a “price?” sent at 1 pm often waits until 4. (Akash and his showrooms are invented.)

He has read our chatbot guide, settled on a button bot first, and wants to build it himself this week. This is how to make a WhatsApp bot without code, in ten steps of about one screen of work each, from the questions it must answer to what to change in week two. The choice between buttons and AI, and what each costs, is in that guide, so it isn’t repeated here.

What you need before step 1

You need a number on the WhatsApp Business Platform and a provider whose chatbot builder, usually called a flow builder, sends buttons and lists. That’s all “no code” means here: you draw the steps, and the provider sends them through Meta’s API.

The free WhatsApp Business app can’t run a bot. Its quick replies are saved texts a person picks by typing a slash, and its greeting and away messages are fixed texts with no buttons. Our auto-reply guide covers what the app does well.

On “free”: Meta doesn’t charge to build a bot, and the first 1,000 service messages per business number each month cost nothing. After that, each bot message is ₹0.1150 to an Indian number, before GST, on the rate card effective 1 October 2026. Your provider’s plan is separate.

Step 1: write down the five questions it must answer

The bot’s job is the five requests that fill most of your chats, and nothing more. Take your last 100 chats and tally them by what the customer wanted.

Akash’s tally (his numbers, illustrative): on-road price 31, range and charging 18, test ride 16, EMI and finance 11, booking a service 9, everything else 15. Five rows cover 85 chats in 100. The other 15, such as a dealership enquiry, an insurance claim or a complaint about a part, go to a person, and the bot shouldn’t attempt them.

Write each question in the customers’ own words, including “rate kya hai” and “how much km in one charge”. You’ll need those words again in step 7.

Step 2: write the greeting

The greeting is one message that says who you are, what the bot can do and how to reach a person, with the menu under it. Keep it to what fits on one phone screen.

Namaste from Rathi EV, Indore. I can send prices, book a test ride
or a service, and explain range and EMI. Tap below, or type
"person" any time to talk to the showroom.

Don’t give the bot a made-up human name. A customer who thinks they’ve been chatting with a person for ten minutes feels cheated when they find out.

Step 3: build the menu as a list message

Use a list for four to ten choices and reply buttons for three or fewer. Meta’s page says list messages “support up to 10 sections, with up to 10 rows for all sections combined”, and its reply-buttons page allows “up to three predefined replies”. Every label has a character limit, and a label one character over won’t send.

Part of Akash’s list	Meta’s limit (characters)	His text	Characters used
Button that opens the list	20	See options	11
Section 1 title	24	Buying a scooter	16
Rows in section 1	24 each	On-road prices / Range and charging / Book a test ride / EMI and finance	14 / 18 / 16 / 15
Section 2 title	24	Service and help	16
Rows in section 2	24 each	Book a service / Talk to the showroom	14 / 20

Each row can also carry a description of up to 72 characters. The list’s header is text only, up to 60 characters, and the body can run to 4,096. Reply buttons are stricter, at 20 characters a label and 1,024 for the body, but they can carry an image, video or document header. Two sections with plain titles let an owner who wants a service find it at a glance. More on each message type is in our buttons and lists guide.

Step 4: build the three branches

Three branches do most of the work: the price list as a document, a test-ride booking in three questions, and a route to a person. Range, EMI and service bookings are smaller copies of the same shapes.

Price list as a document

Send the price list as a PDF with a file name the customer will find later, such as “Rathi EV on-road prices Indore October 2026.pdf”. Put the lowest on-road price in the message text too, because plenty of people won’t open the file. Meta lets a reply-buttons message carry a document as its header, so if your builder allows it, the PDF and the next three choices go out as one service message instead of two: Book a test ride, Talk to the showroom, Main menu.

Book a slot

Ask the showroom (two buttons), then the day (Today, Tomorrow, Another day), then the time; Akash started with a list of ten slots. Tag the contact with the showroom and the slot so the right sales team sees it, and confirm with the address and what to bring. If the window has closed by the evening before, the reminder is a utility template at ₹0.1150, because a reminder about a test ride the customer booked is “specific to or requested by the user”, in the words of Meta’s category guidelines.

Talk to a person

This branch has almost no bot content. It tags the chat for the right showroom and tells the customer when a person will reply. Step 6 sets the rule.

Step 5: plan the after-hours path

Decide your hours, then let the bot behave differently outside them. It still answers the five questions, but the person branch says when someone will reply rather than implying it’s now. Akash’s showrooms open 10 am to 8 pm, so after 8 that branch sends:

The showroom is closed now. Someone from sales will reply here by
10.30 am tomorrow. You can still see prices or book a test ride
from the menu. For a breakdown, call the number on our profile.

WhatsApp’s Business Messaging Policy allows automation inside the 24-hour window but says you “must also have available prompt, clear, and direct escalation paths”. It lists in-chat human agent transfer first, and a phone number among the alternatives. A stated morning time plus the showroom’s phone number gives the night-time customer a real way out. The clock helps here: a customer who writes at 9 pm can get a typed reply until 9 pm the next day, so the 10.30 am answer needs no template.

Step 6: set the handover rule, and decide what each side sees

A chat goes to a person on a few clear signals, and both the customer and the salesperson should be able to see what happened. Akash’s signals:

• The customer taps Talk to the showroom or types “person”.
• The bot fails to understand two messages in a row.
• The message mentions a refund, an accident, a complaint or a fleet order.
• The customer asks for a callback.

The customer sees one line: which showroom has the chat and when to expect a reply. The salesperson sees the whole thread with the bot’s messages in it, the tags (showroom, model, what was tapped), and so has nothing to ask twice. Once a person replies, the bot must stay out of that chat. Check how your builder does this before going live, because a menu arriving in the middle of a price conversation undoes the handover.

Step 7: add keyword triggers

Keywords let a typed word skip the menu, so “price” goes straight to the price list. Keep the set short and match whole words. Akash’s set, built from the words he collected in step 1:

price, rate, kitna, daam          -> price list
test ride, ride, demo             -> test-ride booking
service, servicing                -> service booking
emi, loan, finance                -> EMI and finance
person, call me, human            -> the showroom
menu, hi, hello                   -> the menu
STOP                              -> opt-out

Whole words matter because “rate” sits inside “separate”. Misspellings such as “tets ride” and “servise” are better collected from week one’s unmatched messages than guessed now.

Step 8: test it with three colleagues

Before any customer sees the bot, give three colleagues a script each and an hour. One is a fluent buyer who taps everything in order. One types Hinglish with typos and sends a voice note and a screenshot of a scooter from Instagram. The third tries to break it: taps a button from yesterday’s menu, asks about a rival brand, types “kitna” at 11 pm.

Then check that every path ends at an answer or a person, no message runs past one screen, every label fits, and the after-hours text appears when you fake the hours. Count the bot messages on each path. Akash’s test-ride path sends six, which is 6 × ₹0.1150, about 69 paise a booking, once the free 1,000 are used.

Step 9: count the first week’s numbers

Count three things for the first seven days: chats the bot answered without a person, chats it handed over, and chats abandoned partway. Call a chat abandoned when a bot question got no reply within 24 hours.

Akash’s first week, with his numbers as an illustration: 310 chats, of which the bot answered 170 (about 55%), handed over 95 (about 31%) and lost 45 (about 15%) partway. Of the 45, 28 stopped at the list of ten time slots.

What it cost: about four bot messages per chat, roughly 1,240 that week and 5,300 over a month. If staff replies have already used the number’s free 1,000, the bot’s share is 5,300 × ₹0.1150 = ₹609.50 before GST. Read every handed-over chat as well. The reason each one reached a person tells you which branch to build next.

Step 10: change what week one showed

Fix the step with the most abandons first, then drop rows nobody taps, then add the words people actually typed. Akash’s week-two changes:

• The ten-slot time list became two buttons, Morning and Afternoon, and a salesperson confirms the exact time.
• EMI questions were handed over nearly every time, so that row now goes straight to the finance person with a note of the model.
• “tets ride”, “servise” and “charging time” joined the keyword list.
• The greeting lost a sentence, because people tapped before reading it.

We’d rather a bot hand over too often in its first fortnight than keep someone in a loop. A handover costs a salesperson two minutes. A customer stuck in a loop can message the next dealer on the same road.

TR Test ride enquiry talking to Rathi EV

1. Test ride enquiry:
   hi price of long range model? 1:12 pm
2. Keyword "price": straight to the price list
3. Rathi EV:
   Rathi EV on-road prices, Indore, October 2026 (PDF). The long-range model is ₹1.38 lakh on-road with insurance and registration. Want to try one? 1:12 pm
   • Book a test ride
   • Talk to the showroom
   • Main menu
4. Test ride enquiry:
   Book a test ride 1:13 pm
5. Rathi EV:
   Which showroom suits you? 1:13 pm
   • Vijay Nagar
   • Bhawarkua
6. Test ride enquiry:
   Bhawarkua 1:13 pm
7. Rathi EV:
   Which day? 1:13 pm
   • Today
   • Tomorrow
   • Another day
8. Test ride enquiry:
   Tomorrow 1:14 pm
9. Rathi EV:
   Morning or afternoon? Someone from the showroom will confirm the exact time here. 1:14 pm
   • Morning
   • Afternoon
10. Test ride enquiry:
    Morning 1:14 pm
11. Rathi EV:
    Booked for tomorrow morning at our Bhawarkua showroom. Please bring your driving licence. Sales will confirm the time within the hour. 1:14 pm
12. Tagged: test ride, Bhawarkua, tomorrow morning. Shows in the Bhawarkua sales view

When to add an AI agent

Add one when week two’s unmatched messages show typed questions the menu can’t answer, such as whether a scooter can charge from an ordinary socket in a rented flat. An AI agent writes its own answer from the documents and website pages you give it, and hands the chat to a person with a summary when it can’t answer.

Two things change on the bill. Its replies are still service messages at Meta’s rate, and providers charge for the AI itself, often as credits per answer, so ask how many credits a typical answer uses and whether test runs use them too. If one or two people answer every chat from a single phone, Meta’s own Business AI in the Business app may be enough; we compared the two in Meta’s Business AI or an AI agent. Twelve finished flows for other trades are in our bot examples.

Start with the tally

Do step 1 on paper with last week’s chats before you open any builder. Then write the greeting and the six row titles, count the characters, and send the list to your own phone. That’s an afternoon, and the branches go quicker once the menu reads right. Terms such as service message and customer service window are in the glossary.