📇 WhatsApp Business connected to your CRM: how it works and what to demand

The question almost always arrives the same way: «we have WhatsApp and we have a CRM, can someone connect them?». It can be done, and it is not exotic work, but it is not installing a plugin either: the number has to move to the WhatsApp Business API and you have to decide what gets stored in the customer record.

What «connecting WhatsApp to the CRM» actually means

Done properly, it means four concrete things:

• An incoming WhatsApp message creates or finds the customer record by phone number.
• The conversation stays in that record's history, next to calls, emails and tickets.
• The agent replies from the CRM, not from a mobile phone, and the customer receives it on their usual WhatsApp.
• What happens in the CRM can go out over WhatsApp: an appointment confirmation, a billing notice, a follow-up on a deal.

Without the first point you have a shared chat; without the third one, every agent keeps replying from their own phone and the history belongs to the person, not to the company.

First things first: the number

The WhatsApp Business mobile App integrates with nothing. To connect it to a CRM the number must be registered on the WhatsApp Business API, which has three consequences worth knowing up front:

• That number stops working in the mobile App once it is registered.
• The company is verified by Meta with its legal details and its own website.
• You can keep the number the business already uses, but the move is one-way: plan it.

The 24-hour window, which drives the cost

Within 24 hours of the customer's last message, the company replies with free text. After that you can only write using a template approved by Meta, and that message is billed by category (utility, marketing, authentication). This is why a serious integration is not just «seeing the messages»: it includes managing templates, knowing which window each conversation is in, and not firing marketing at people who never asked for it.

What to ask the provider

1. Is the number registered under my company? If the WhatsApp Business account belongs to the provider, the day you switch providers you lose the number and the history.
2. Do I get the history if I leave? Those conversations are your customers' data.
3. What does each conversation cost and how is it billed by category?
4. Several agents at once? With assignment, not everyone seeing everything.
5. What happens after hours? A bot that answers and logs the case beats an automatic «we will get back to you».
6. Does it measure response times and satisfaction? Without that you cannot manage support.
7. Does it handle consent? Messaging people who never opted in is the fast lane to Meta downgrading your number.

Who can do it

You need a provider with both halves: access to the WhatsApp Business API and a CRM of its own for the conversation to land in. When those are two different companies — one supplies WhatsApp, another the CRM — every problem ends in «that belongs to the other provider».

TelHarbor does both: we register the number on the WhatsApp Business API under your company, and messages land in the CRM and the Help Desk, in the same inbox that already holds phone calls, email and SMS. We operate from Costa Rica and serve the whole of the Americas, with support in Spanish and English.

What it looks like once it runs

• A message arrives from an unknown number: the record and the ticket are created, and the customer gets a case number.
• A message arrives from a long-standing customer: the agent sees the full history before replying.
• An appointment booked in the CRM goes out with confirmation and reminder over WhatsApp.
• When the case closes, a one-question survey measures satisfaction on the same channel.
• The manager sees how many conversations came in, how long the first reply took and who handled it.

If you already have your own CRM and do not want to replace it, the other route is the TelHarbor API: your system sends and receives WhatsApp messages on its own, with webhooks for events. See plans and pricing or request a quote.