WhatsApp Business Conversation Statuses: Reference Table with Transition Criteria

9 min read

This is an operational glossary, not a conceptual one. It doesn't explain what a chat is or how the 24-hour window works. It defines the six states a support team needs so that two people don't answer the same thing, so they know who should respond now, and so they can measure later. The column that matters is not the definition: it's the transition criterion, because almost all the problems in a shared inbox come from there. When a conversation sits in a state with no clear owner, someone opens it, sees it was already answered, leaves it open, and it gets lost. That isn't fixed with more people: it's fixed with states and transition rules.

How to read this table

Each state has four pieces of data: who the owner is (the person or system responsible for moving it forward), the maximum reasonable time before something breaks, the entry criterion (what has to happen for the conversation to reach that state), and the exit criterion (what has to happen for it to leave). The timeframes are working parameters, not universal truths: a store with simple inquiries can sustain shorter timeframes than a real estate agency waiting for client documentation. What is non-negotiable is that the timeframe exists and is written down, because a state without a timeframe becomes a hole.

A vocabulary note to avoid confusion: here 'conversation' is the thread with a contact, not an individual message. A contact can have a closed conversation and, months later, open a new one. States describe the thread, not the person.

State	Owner	What it means	Entry criterion	Exit criterion	Suggested maximum timeframe
New	The system / the inbox	An incoming message arrived and no one on the team has picked it up yet. It's the default entry state.	A message from the contact comes in through any connected channel and there is no open conversation with that contact.	Someone picks it up (moves to Assigned) or the system routes it by schedule rule.	Minutes, not hours: if no one picks it up within business hours, it's a staffing alert.
Assigned	A specific person	There is a named owner. The rest of the team sees that this conversation already has an owner and doesn't touch it.	An agent picks it up from the inbox, or a distribution rule assigns it by shift, tag, or load.	The agent responds and waits for the customer (moves to Waiting), or detects that the case is beyond them (moves to Escalated).	The first response time the team has set. If it expires, it goes back to the queue.
Waiting	The assigned person	The team has already responded and the next move is the customer's. It's not a passive state: it's a conversation with a clock running.	A response was sent and there is nothing else to do until the contact replies.	The contact replies (returns to Assigned for the same owner) or the timeframe expires without a response (moves to Closed due to inactivity).	Depends on the industry: hours in active support, days if waiting for a document or a payment.
Escalated	A defined owner, not 'the team'	The case left the normal flow: it requires a decision, a piece of data the agent doesn't have, an upset customer that needs to be contained, or a commercial exception.	The agent can't resolve it with the available information, the customer asks to speak with a manager, or the case falls into a category marked as sensitive.	The owner resolves it, leaves the decision written in the conversation, and returns it to Assigned.	However long the decision takes, but with a named owner. An escalation without an owner is a lost conversation with more steps.
Closed	No one (remains as history)	The conversation ended: it was resolved, it was closed due to inactivity, or the contact asked not to receive more messages.	The goal of the conversation was met, the Waiting timeframe expired, or the contact asked for it to be closed.	It only exits if the contact writes again: it moves to Reopened.	Not applicable: it's a terminal state until there is a new message.
Reopened	Whoever closed it, or distribution if unavailable	The contact wrote again on a closed thread. It's not a new conversation: it carries the history and context.	A message arrives from the contact on a closed conversation.	It's treated like Assigned: someone picks it up and continues from the history.	Same as New regarding first response, but with more context available.

The timeframes in this table are working parameters defined by each team. They are not WhatsApp or Meta limits: they are internal agreements so that a state doesn't end up without an owner.

The most common mistake: using 'waiting' as a dumping ground

In practice, most messy inboxes have the same problem: everything that couldn't be resolved ended up in 'waiting'. It's the most comfortable state because it doesn't force anyone to do anything. The result is a list of conversations that look active but where the next move is the customer's and no one is watching. The conversation goes cold, the customer buys elsewhere, and the team thinks it handled it.

The way to detect it is simple: if your 'waiting' inbox holds more than half of the open conversations and many have been there for days, you are not waiting for replies: you are accumulating. The solution is not to write to everyone, it is to review the exit criteria. A waiting conversation must have a concrete deadline, and when it expires it must move to Closed due to inactivity, not stay floating. If the team does not dare to close it because 'maybe they will reply', the problem is that there is no defined next step for when they do reply: reopening must be resolved before closing. In a store, that next step can be notifying through a campaign that the product is available again; in an aesthetics clinic, offering an appointment in the time slot the client had requested. Without that step, closing is scary and the conversation stays in limbo.

Escalation is not the same as reassignment

They are two different movements and mixing them breaks the measurement. Reassigning is passing the conversation to another person who will do the same thing: another agent on the same shift, someone who came back from a day off, a colleague with less workload. The case continues in the normal flow. Escalating is raising the case to someone who can decide something the agent cannot: a discount, an exception, a refund, a legal or commercial response that exceeds their role.

The difference matters because they have different owners. A reassignment is owned by the new agent and is measured with the same indicators as before. An escalation is owned by whoever decides, and while it is escalated the original agent cannot close it. If the inbox system does not distinguish one from the other, response time reports get contaminated: a conversation escalated for three days appears as if an agent had taken three days to reply, when in reality it was waiting for a decision from another area.

Reassign: same type of task, another person. Measured with the normal indicators.
Escalate: different task, another person with more authority. Measured separately and with its own deadline.
A conversation can be reassigned several times without ever being escalated.
An escalated conversation should not be reassigned: first the decision is resolved, then it returns to the flow.

Closing and reopening: where context is lost

The healthiest closing criterion is one that can be explained in one sentence: it was closed because it was resolved, because the waiting period expired, or because the contact requested it. Any other reason ('it's done', 'they don't answer', 'I'll close it and if they come back someone else will see it') generates closed conversations that are actually still open in someone's head.

Reopening is the state that almost nobody defines and the one that costs the most money. When a contact writes again about a closed thread, there are two decisions to make: whether it is treated as a new conversation or as a continuation, and who handles it. Treating it as new makes the client repeat everything they already said, which is the most frequent complaint in chat support. Treating it as a continuation requires the history to be visible to whoever takes it. The practical rule: if the new message picks up the previous topic, it is reopened and handled by whoever closed it if they are available; if it is a different topic, it is a new conversation even if it comes from the same contact.

Situation upon reopening	How it is handled	Who takes it	What is kept
The contact returns to the same topic within the waiting period	Reopened	The originally assigned agent	Full history and context of the previous conversation
The contact returns to the same topic much later	Reopened	The originally assigned agent if available; if not, normal distribution	Full history, so data is not requested again
The contact writes about a different topic	New conversation	Normal distribution by shift or tag	Nothing from the previous thread as working context, although the history remains visible
The contact explicitly asks not to receive any more messages	Closed without reopening for campaigns	No one	The record of the request is kept so as not to contact them again

Checklist to audit your inbox statuses

This is reviewed once a week and checked off. No special tool is needed: it is enough to open the inbox and count. If two or more boxes remain unchecked, the problem is not message volume, it is process.

Every open conversation has an assigned status, it is not 'without status'.
Every conversation in Assigned has a named person, not a team.
No conversation in New exceeds the first response time that the team defined.
On hold has a visible deadline, not just a tag.
Overdue on-hold conversations are closed due to inactivity instead of floating.
Escalations have a named owner and a decision recorded in the conversation.
Reports distinguish a reassignment from an escalation.
Closed conversations have a closing reason, not just a date.
Reopened conversations keep the history visible to whoever takes them.
There is a written rule to know when a new message from the same contact opens a new conversation instead of reopening the previous one.

How these statuses are reflected in an AI-powered inbox

Statuses can be tracked by hand in a spreadsheet, but beyond a certain volume that becomes unfeasible: someone has to update the status every time they reply, and that someone is busy helping customers. A shared inbox with AI suggestions and multi-agent support helps make the status a result of the work and not an extra task: the conversation is assigned when someone takes it, changes to on hold when it is replied to, and closes when appropriate. In Wando, the AI suggests replies that the team approves with one click, and tags and statistics allow reviewing afterwards what happened with each conversation. The free trial lasts 14 days and does not require a card; if you want to see the plans, they are at wando.online/pricing.

Questions worth answering before defining statuses

Before writing the team's status table, there are three definitions that do not depend on any tool and that usually remain unresolved. First: what counts as a 'first response'? The first human message, the first message with useful content, or the first response that resolves the inquiry? If the team does not agree on this, the response time indicator measures different things depending on who looks at it. Second: which conversations can be closed without a response? A price inquiry that the customer never answered can be closed due to inactivity; an escalated complaint cannot. Third: who can close? If anyone can close any conversation, inactivity closures become a way to get work off one's back.

Once those three things are defined, the status table holds up on its own. And there is a fourth one that is worth writing down even if it seems obvious: what to do when the contact writes outside business hours. The conversation comes in as New, the system can automatically reply with a business-hours message, but the status does not change until someone takes it. If that conversation is counted as 'unanswered' in the next morning's reports, the team will be measuring its own performance wrong: no one was working. The automatic business-hours reply resolves the message, not the status, and that distinction is what prevents pointless arguments about numbers.

Frequently asked questions

How many statuses should a WhatsApp inbox have?+

Six are enough for almost any operation: new, assigned, waiting, escalated, closed and reopened. Fewer than four leaves cases uncovered (especially escalation, which is the one most often disguised as 'waiting'). More than eight forces the team to think about which status to put each conversation in, and at that point the system stops being used.

What is the difference between 'waiting' and 'closed'?+

In waiting, the next move is the customer's but the conversation is still active and running against a deadline. Closed is a terminal status: nothing is pending until the contact writes again. The typical mistake is leaving conversations in waiting that are no longer going to move forward, because it gives the feeling that they are still alive.

Does a reopened conversation count as new for response time?+

Yes for the clock, no for the context. First response time is measured from the contact's new message, just like in a new conversation. What changes is that whoever picks it up has the history in view and should not ask the customer to repeat what they already said.

Who owns an escalated conversation?+

A named person who can make the decision the agent cannot make. If the owner is 'the team' or 'the area', the escalation has no owner and gets lost just like an unassigned conversation. While it is escalated, the original agent cannot close it.

Can a conversation be closed without a reply from the customer?+

Yes, for inactivity, as long as there is a defined and visible deadline. What is not advisable is closing it without a recorded reason, because afterwards nobody can reconstruct why it was closed or whether the customer was left waiting for something.

How do you prevent two people from answering the same conversation?+

With the assigned status and a simple rule: if the conversation has an owner, nobody else replies. The problem appears when new conversations are not explicitly taken and remain in a shared list; there, two agents can write at the same time without knowing it.

Do the statuses depend on the tool being used?+

No. The statuses are a team agreement and can be kept in a spreadsheet. What the tool does is make the status update as an effect of the work instead of being a separate manual task, and keep a record for measuring afterwards.

Answer WhatsApp with AI

Try Wando free. No credit card required.