WhatsApp automation for Kuwait teams, built around your real working hours

Most Kuwait teams don't need a hundred automations. They need five that run every day without anyone thinking about them: a greeting that asks for the customer's language, a reply for when you're closed, a flow that captures ad leads, order or booking updates, and a rule that sends each chat to the right person.

Leave the rest to people. Complaints, refunds, custom quotes and anything where a wrong answer costs you a customer should reach a human quickly. Automation's job there is to collect the order number and the photo before the person picks it up, not to handle it alone.

Automation on the official API runs inside your own Meta business portfolio, on your own number. It is not a script driving WhatsApp Web, which breaks WhatsApp's terms and puts the number at risk.

A Gallabox workflow starts when something happens — a customer messages you, or arrives from a Click-to-WhatsApp ad — and then runs the steps you drag into place: send a message, show buttons or a list, branch on a condition, add a tag, save an answer to a contact field, wait, write a row to Google Sheets, push or pull a CRM record, call your own system's API, or jump to another flow. Variables drop the customer's name, order number or branch into each message.

What you can use depends on the plan. Basic includes message steps, basic conditions and limited tag and contact-field updates, with up to 5 flows active at once. Essential opens the delay, Google Sheets, CRM, API and jump-flow steps plus conversation fields, and raises the cap to 20 active flows. Advanced allows up to 100, and Enterprise has no cap.

Tags and contact fields are the part people skip and later regret. A flow that saves area, language and interest today is what lets you send a segmented broadcast or start the right sequence next month.

Kuwait's working week runs Sunday to Thursday, but plenty of shops, restaurants and clinics are busiest on Friday and Saturday. Your automation should follow your actual hours, not a default. Business-hours rules come with Essential: inside your hours a chat goes to the team, and outside them the customer gets the reply you wrote for when you're closed.

Ramadan changes several things at once: shorter days, late openings after iftar, and some teams working split shifts. Holidays move too. National Day and Liberation Day fall in late February, while Eid dates shift each year and are confirmed close to the day. There is no Ramadan setting in Gallabox; you enter the hours yourself. The special-days and holidays setup on Advanced lets you do that in advance, while on Essential someone changes the hours by hand before each one.

The after-hours message matters more than it looks. 'We'll reply shortly' at 11pm on a Thursday is a promise your team will break. Say when you open and what the customer can do now — leave an order number, pick a time for a call — and don't quote a response time you can't keep during Ramadan or a sale.

Round-robin assignment shares new chats between the people in a team, so one person doesn't end up with every lead. It starts on Essential, which also brings teams and an active or inactive switch per agent, so chats don't queue for someone who is on leave or off shift.

Escalation catches the chats that slip. Essential includes basic agent escalation. Advanced extends escalation to every message and adds webhook automation, so an unanswered chat can also trigger something outside Gallabox, such as an alert in a system you already run.

Every plan can send a waiting message, so a customer who writes during a rush knows they've been seen. Keep it short, and don't let it pretend to be an answer.

The useful automations reach outside WhatsApp. A Google Sheets step can log every enquiry by branch. CRM steps create or update the lead in HubSpot, Zoho CRM or LeadSquared. An API step can check order status in your own system and reply with the answer. Shopify stores can add the $5-a-month Shopify integration for order and abandoned-cart messages.

Payment confirmations are a custom job in Kuwait. Gallabox has no built-in connection to KNET, MyFatoorah or Tap, so we send a payment link from your gateway and use the gateway's webhook to trigger the confirmation. Tools without a direct integration can often be linked through Zapier or Pabbly Connect.

Automated messages are not free by default. From 1 October 2026, utility templates sent inside the 24-hour window are charged, and service replies are charged after 1,000 free per number per month; Kuwait's rate for both is $0.044 before the provider's markup. An order flow that sends four updates where two would do now costs twice as much.