WhatsApp follow-ups customers do not mute or report

What Meta watches

Meta does not judge your wording by reading it. It watches what customers do with it. Message quality is worked out from how people received your messages over the past week, weighted towards the most recent days. The signals are blocks, reports, mutes and archives, plus the reason a customer gives when they block you: no longer needed, did not sign up, spam, offensive messages, or no reason.

Your number gets a quality rating of green, yellow or red. Each template gets its own rating from feedback and read rates. Meta also limits how many marketing templates one person receives from all businesses together, depending on how much they read and how full their inbox is. And Meta's policy says it can limit what a business sends, or remove its access, when the negative feedback is significant.

The same signals that punish spam reward messages people want. That is useful, because it means the test is simple: would this customer be glad to get it?

Start with permission

Meta's policy lets you contact people on WhatsApp only if they have given you their number and agreed to hear from you. It leaves the method to you, says you are responsible for following the laws that apply to your messages, and tells you to respect any request to stop, made on or off WhatsApp.

• Ask once, in plain words, when the customer first enquires: 'May we send updates about your application on WhatsApp?'
• Record the answer with the date and how it was given.
• Ask separately before you send promotions, and before you call a customer on WhatsApp. Meta suggests separate opt-in for each category of message and for calls.
• Treat a stop as a stop everywhere. If someone says stop on the phone, it applies to WhatsApp too.

Malaysian law points the same way. Under the Personal Data Protection Act a person can at any time tell you in writing to stop using their personal data for direct marketing, which the Act defines as sending advertising or marketing material to particular people by any means. The Communications and Multimedia Act was amended in 2025 to add section 233A on unsolicited commercial electronic messages, but it comes into force only on a date the Minister appoints. The Commission (MCMC) consulted on the detailed rules in August and September 2025, covering consent, sender details and a way to opt out. As far as we can find, they are not yet in force, so check MCMC's website before you rely on this. Our PDPA guide is a plain starting point.

Make every message about their case

Meta's advice for high-quality messages is to make them personal and useful, to avoid open-ended hellos, and to avoid sending too many in a day. In loan work that means each message should refer to something the customer actually did, and ask for one thing.

Set a cadence and a stop rule

Meta gives no number for how many messages are too many. It says only to avoid sending too many a day. So set your own limit, and build it into the CRM so it does not depend on memory.

Our suggestion for a lead who has not replied, and not a Meta rule: one message after the enquiry, one reminder two or three days later, then a phone call, then stop and put the lead aside for a later review. The follow-up rules guide has a fuller schedule.

• Stop when the customer asks you to.
• Stop when the case closes, or when the bank has said no and you have told the customer.
• Stop when you reach your own limit.
• Send at the hours you would be happy to phone.

Make stopping easy

A customer who cannot find the way out reaches for block or report, and those are the signals Meta counts. Say how to stop in your first message, and repeat it in anything promotional. Meta's utility category includes a template that confirms a stop, so a short confirmation is allowed.

• Accept 'stop' in any form your customers use, such as 'stop' or 'berhenti'.
• Remove the person from every list at once: WhatsApp, your call lists and any SMS list.
• Record every opt-out yourself and make sure it is honoured. Your business is responsible for that, and a person on your team has to do it. The multi-line dialer has a do-not-call list that applies to every campaign, but a stop sent on WhatsApp still has to be recorded by a person.
• Log the date and who handled it, so you can show what happened if you are asked.

What not to put in a follow-up

The window and templates guide explains the categories and the review in more detail.

Check your numbers every week

• Phone number quality. In WhatsApp Manager, open Phone numbers and look at the rating. If it is yellow or red, hover over it: Meta shows block reasons where it has them.
• Template quality. Open Message templates and look at each one. Pause any campaign that depends on a template rated low.
• Paused templates. Do not keep retrying. Meta rejects the attempts anyway. Change the wording or who receives it, then resubmit.
• Messaging limit. It rises when your messages are high quality and you use at least half of your current limit over a week.

The WhatsApp setup that comes with the Loan Advisory CRM includes approved templates for follow-ups and reminders, and we handle the submissions to Meta.