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You configured follow-ups, a lead went quiet, and instead of a nudge the conversation shows:
Follow-up not sent — WhatsApp only allows a reply within 24 hours of the last message from this person. They will get a reply as soon as they write in again.
Nothing is broken. That notice is the product telling you it deliberately did not send something, which is the only alternative to a bot that goes silent for reasons you cannot see.
The messaging window
WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger all work the same way: a business may send a plain message to somebody only within 24 hours of that person's last message. Outside that window the platform refuses the send.
Every message the bot sends is inside the window by construction — it is a reply to something that just arrived. The follow-up is the bot's one exception, because it fires hours after the last thing the customer said. If those hours cross the window, there is no legal send left to make. The other exception is yours: a reply you write in the Inbox a day or more after the customer's last message.
Why we do not send anyway
Two reasons, and the second is the one that matters to you.
- The send would be refused. Attempting it changes nothing except adding a failure.
- Repeatedly attempting messages the platform refuses counts against your account standing, not ours. It is your number, your Page and your Instagram account, and spending their reputation on a message that cannot arrive is not a trade we will make on your behalf.
There are ways to message outside the window — WhatsApp's approved message templates, and message tags on Instagram and Messenger. This product uses neither. Both carry real account-suspension risk if used loosely, and both are decisions with compliance consequences that belong to you rather than to a default.
What happens instead
The follow-up is skipped and the retry clock stops. The notice goes in the thread so the skip is visible where you would look for the message.
The lead is not closed for a nudge that was never sent. Instead it is held under Needs you as Review before closing, with no alert and no reminder, so somebody decides what happens to it. In the conversation you can Close as lost, or Try again, which hands the lead back to the bot. The window has closed, so no follow-up goes out after Try again; the bot answers as soon as the lead writes. If nobody acts within Days your team has to decide (3 by default, in Settings), the lead closes as lost ("unresponsive"). With that set to 0, a skipped follow-up is only recorded: the lead is neither held nor closed, and stays in conversation.
If the person writes in again, the hold ends and the bot answers. Their message opens a fresh 24-hour window, ends the review, and the bot carries on from where it was. You do not have to do anything to make that work. The same goes for a lead that was already closed as lost for not replying: their message reopens it.
One thing to expect: a lead who was quiet for longer than the quiet gap (24 hours by default, Welcome a lead back after (hours) in Settings) is welcomed back first. The bot greets them, summarises the earlier enquiry in their own words and asks whether to pick that up or start something different. So after a skipped follow-up, the first reply is usually this welcome, not the next question. A lead who comes back has the detail.
Who is followed up, and who is not
A follow-up is set up after the bot's reply and waits for the interval you chose. It is dropped, with no notice, for a lead who:
- has taken a conversation over to a person (until you hand it back);
- told the bot to stop, in any of the 12 languages the bot reads. That lead is closed, so no follow-up is set up;
- is on a safety hold, after an emergency or a possible under-18. Only a person lifts a hold, and the bot says nothing to a held conversation but its one fixed sentence;
- has already been decided (qualified, matched, won or lost), or has a meeting booked. A lead whose enquiry is complete and only being answered is not nudged either;
- has answered every must-know question and gone quiet. That lead is not nudged: after the Decide after a lead goes quiet (minutes) period in Settings (30 by default), the bot decides with what it has.
A lead who was shown options, or offered times, and went quiet gets one fixed nudge, "Did any of these catch your eye?" or "Would one of those times work for you?". If that goes unanswered, or the window has closed, your team gets the lead as No option chosen or Didn't book a time, instead of a review.
Checked again just before sending
The nudge takes a few seconds to write, and the lead can write in that time. So the conversation is checked again right before anything is sent. If the lead has written, you or a colleague took over, a safety hold started, the stage moved on or another chain of follow-ups replaced this one, the nudge is dropped without a word and nothing is charged. The bot never says "just checking in" straight after it has answered.
What a follow-up says
A follow-up refers to what the lead was discussing, in their language, instead of a generic "are you still looking?". The AI writes it from the last few messages: one or two friendly sentences that end with one short, easy question, which is the question the lead has not yet answered in lighter words, or the next step. It states no price, figure, date or availability, mentions nothing private the lead shared, and promises nothing. Its wording varies; to a lead who was choosing a December trip it might read:
Hi Priya, just checking in on the Spiti trip we were planning for December. Would you still like to pick it up?
When the AI writes it, it counts as one AI reply, like any other reply.
If the AI cannot write it, a fixed line is sent instead. That happens when your AI replies for the month are used up, when the AI fails, and when what it wrote is empty, cut off before it finished, too long, or not a message. The fixed line is the same in every case, in the lead's language, and costs nothing:
Hi, Priya — just checking in on your enquiry with Northside Clinics. Happy to pick up whenever suits you.
The lead still gets a nudge, and the window rules above are unchanged. A follow-up is never sent outside the 24-hour window, whichever wording it would have had.
A follow-up that was refused
A follow-up inside the window can still be refused — the person blocked you, or your WhatsApp number's display name is waiting for Meta's review. It stays in the thread marked Not delivered, with the reason under it and a What to do link. It does not count as one of your follow-ups, and the next one is still scheduled.
When the follow-ups run out
If every follow-up (Nudges before the bot stops, 3 by default, up to 10) went out inside the window and the lead replied to none of them, the lead is held for the same review. Here Try again starts the follow-ups from the beginning if the window is still open. Set Days your team has to decide to 0 to close these leads as lost at once instead. At 0 nudges the bot never nudges and the lead goes straight to the review.
The count is for one silence. When the lead writes again, the follow-ups they already had no longer count, and the next time they go quiet they get the full set from the first.
With the default timing, the window usually closes before the last follow-up is due, so most quiet leads reach the review through a skipped follow-up rather than this way. At the default 8 hours between follow-ups, 2 fit inside the window, whatever the number of follow-ups is set to; Settings shows how many fit at the interval you choose.
What you can do
- Reply by hand, later. You can send from the thread whenever the window is open. Taking the conversation over also stops the AI's follow-ups entirely, until you hand it back; handing it back starts them again from the first, if the window is still open. Once the window has closed, the message box is switched off and says when the person last wrote, so nothing is sent that the platform would refuse. It opens again as soon as they write in. The same goes for Send to lead and Send options (sending a lead their matches by hand), and for a change to a meeting: the button is off and says how long ago they last wrote.
- Follow up sooner. Nudge a quiet lead every (hours) in Settings, under Conversation, takes 1 to 23 hours. A nudge scheduled well inside 24 hours lands; one scheduled for the next morning may not. A day or more is not offered, because at that interval not even the first follow-up could be sent.
- Reach them another way, if you have another way. A lead who went quiet on a channel is not unreachable, only unreachable on that channel until they write again.
A conversation nobody has written into
There is one more case that reads the same and is not a lapsed window: a conversation with no inbound message at all. An unmeasurable window is treated as a closed one, deliberately — otherwise a record created by an import would become a licence to message a stranger. If you see the notice on a thread that has never had a customer message in it, that is why.