It can be frustrating when your automations, including Cart abandonment, browse abandonment, Welcome series, post-purchase, Winback, Rating Added, COD, are marked as "Active" in BusinessChat, but you realize no messages are actually being sent to customers. This guide provides the definitive diagnostic checklist our support specialists use to resolve this issue.
By following these steps methodically, you'll be able to pinpoint the exact cause and get your automations running successfully again.
1. Check Template Approval Status:
The message template is the core of your automation. If it isn't approved, correctly categorized, and properly configured, your automation will fail before it even begins.
A template must be Approved and have a healthy status on WhatsApp to be used in any automation.
Statuses that will prevent sending include Rejected, Paused, or Disabled.
To ensure you have the most up-to-date status from Meta, use the Sync Numbers feature in your BusinessChat WhatsApp settings.
2. Analyze the Automation Trigger and Filters
Automation starts only when a customer's action precisely matches its trigger conditions and any applied filters. Even a minor mismatch between the customer's action and your settings will cause the automation to fail. Precision is critical.
Review Trigger Logic: Carefully re-examine the trigger event for your specific automation type. For instance, the "Cash on Delivery" automation is designed to trigger only if an order's status is "new" upon creation. If your e-commerce platform assigns a different initial status, the trigger condition will never be met.
Examine Active Filters: Filters are powerful for targeting, but they can also introduce errors if they are too restrictive. Review any filters you have applied. Common examples that could be preventing triggers include:
Cart Abandonment: "Cart value is greater than X" or "Products include Y."
Review Automation: "Rating is equal to 5 stars."
Win Back: "Number of days since last order."
If you have complex filters, try temporarily removing them to test if the core trigger is working. If the automation starts sending messages, you can then reapply your filters one by one to identify which one is causing the issue.
With the automation's internal configuration verified, it's time to consider factors related to the customers you are trying to reach.
3. Evaluate the "Smart Sending" Feature
The "Smart Sending" feature is a crucial tool designed to prevent spamming customers with too many messages in a short period. It is also a very common reason why an active automation might not send a message to a specific person, even if all other conditions are met.
When Smart Sending is active, it will automatically exclude a customer from an automation if any of the following conditions are met:
The customer received any marketing campaign in the last 5 days.
The customer was part of any other automation in the last 5 days.
The customer created an order in the last 5 days.
You can check if the Smart sending feature is activated on any automation by clicking the automation, choosing edit, and clicking Triggers. If it’s not visible in the triggers section, when you click publish changes, you will see the Smart sending option in the small window that will be opened. See if the checkbox next to it is checked or not.
Be aware that some automations, like Cart Abandonment, have Smart Sending enabled by default but can be disabled, while for others, like Win Back, it is mandatory and cannot be disabled.
Note: BusinessChat enforces the Smart Sending feature on some automations to avoid spamming customers who might block your number and that will result in ban from Meta.
After ruling out customer-specific issues, the final area to investigate involves broader restrictions and limits imposed by the WhatsApp platform itself.
4. Review WhatsApp Messaging Limits
WhatsApp imposes daily limits on the number of business-initiated conversations. These limits are organized into tiers. For example, new accounts typically start at Level 1 (up to 1,000 unique customers in 24 hours), and can scale to Level 2 (10,000), Level 3 (100,000), and beyond based on number quality and sending volume.
You should check your current messaging limit tier in your WhatsApp Manager.
If your account has reached its daily limit, all subsequent business-initiated messages, including those from automations, will fail until the 24-hour window resets.
=> If you’ve reached the tier limit threshold for the day, your Number status will be visible as Restricted.
5. Analyze the Customer Journey (Automations Execution Logs)
If the message is missing (Outcome A), check the technical logs to identofy the exit reason.
Important: This step uses the specific Automation Log Search tool, which is separate from your general contact list search feature. Its only purpose is to show technical history. It will not redirect you to the customer's conversation or open their profile.
To check the customer journey with automations using the Automation Execution Logs, follow these steps:
Collect at least 3 customers you think didn't receive an automation message as expected.
Click the automations icon from your BusinessChat account
Click Automations Logs
Paste a number from your samples in the search box and click Enter.
Check the customer’s journey on your store. See the automations he entered and exited. It might be that because he was part of another recent marketing automation, the Smart sending feature excluded them from the Cart automation.
=> From here, you will be able to see all the automations that the customers entered. If you didn’t find the cart automation listed, regardless of the result, meaning whether he finished the automation or was excluded, then you need to report a bug to the technical team.