If you're using the WhatsApp API to communicate with your customers, it's important to understand the Quality Rating that applies. Here's what you need to know:
Checking your quality rating
You can check your current messaging limits and rating in the WhatsApp Manager > Overview Dashboard > Insights tab.
What is Quality Rating?
Quality Rating is an internal rating system that WhatsApp uses to measure the quality of service provided by businesses. It's based on how messages have been received by recipients over the past seven days and is weighted by recency. It is determined by a combination of quality signals from conversations between businesses and users.
The sentiment of your users will determine your phone number's quality rating, and ultimately your ability to initiate conversations on WhatsApp.
Impact of Quality Rating
Your quality rating impacts your overall phone number status and your messaging limit. Businesses can improve their quality rating by following WhatsApp's recommended good practices, and if the quality rating reaches low, their number will become Flagged. Messaging limit tiers determine how many users they can send templates to on a daily basis, and businesses can upgrade their messaging limit tiers if the quality rating improves.
When the quality rating reaches low quality, your phone number status changes from Connected to Flagged. If the quality doesn't improve over 7 days, the status returns to Connected. However, the messaging limit will decrease to the next level. For example, the phone number that used to have the 100,000 messaging limit now has the 10,000 messaging limit.
You will receive an email and notification in Meta Business Manager as a warning.
- Connected: You can send outgoing messages within your set messaging limit.
- Flagged: This status occurs when the quality rating reaches low quality. Businesses can't upgrade messaging limit tiers while the status is Flagged. If the quality rating:
- Improves to a high or medium quality by the 7th day from when your status was changed to Flagged, the status will return to Connected and your messaging limit tier will remain unaffected.
- Does not improve to a high or medium quality by the 7th day from when your status was changed to Flagged, your status will return to Connected. However, your messaging limit will decrease to the next level.
- Restricted: This status occurs when you reach your messaging limit, regardless of the quality rating. While the status is Restricted, you can’t send any outgoing messages until 24 hours have elapsed. You can still respond to any messages that customers initiate.
How to Improve Your Quality Rating?
To improve your Quality Rating, you can follow these tips:
Make sure your templates comply with the WhatsApp Business Policy. Make sure that your messages are clear, personalised, and useful to users. Avoid sending open-ended welcome or introductory messages. Only send template messages to users that have opted in to receive messages on that specific topic. For example, if a user opted-in for Covid updates but you start sending other health updates, the user may respond negatively because they didn’t opt-in to that specific communication. Be mindful of your messaging frequency. Avoid sending users too many templates a day. Be thoughtful of informational messages, optimising for content and length. Check if your organization has added and sent a new template within the last 7 days. This may help determine a problematic template(s). By following these best practices, you can improve your Quality Rating and maintain good standing with WhatsApp.