One WhatsApp number, answered by the whole team

Most Kuwait businesses start WhatsApp on one phone. It works until two people need to answer at once, the person holding the phone goes on leave, or a customer is told something different by each person who picks up. Nobody can see who replied to what, and when an employee leaves, their chats can leave with them.

A team inbox moves the conversation off the handset. Messages to your business number land in a shared inbox that everyone on the team opens with their own login. Each chat shows who is handling it, what was said before, and any tags or notes the team has added.

Customers see nothing different. They message the same number and get replies from the same business name; they just get them sooner, and from someone who can read the whole history.

A worry we hear often: the owner has run the business from the WhatsApp Business app for years and doesn't want to give it up. WhatsApp Coexistence lets the Business app and Gallabox work on the same number, so the owner keeps the app on their phone while the team answers from the shared inbox.

Coexistence isn't a switch you flip yourself. Gallabox support enables it for the account, and we check it suits your setup before moving the number, because some things behave differently when a number runs in both places. If it doesn't fit, the alternative is a dedicated number for the team, with the owner's number left as it is.

Either way, the number should sit in your own Meta business portfolio, not an agency's or a freelancer's. If the person who set it up moves on, you keep the number and its history.

In Kuwait the first routing question is often language. A bot asks Arabic or English in the first message and tags the chat, and the chat goes to the team that handles that language. On Essential and above you can set up teams and rotate chats round-robin inside each one, so no single agent ends up with the whole queue.

The second question is time. Many Kuwait shops, clinics and showrooms take chats well into the evening and through the weekend. Agents can mark themselves away when their shift ends, and business-hours rules, also from Essential, tell customers when a person will be back instead of leaving them waiting. Holiday schedules, for Eid closures and national holidays, need Advanced.

A waiting message, available on every plan, tells a customer their chat has arrived while they wait for an agent. Keep it honest: say when they can expect a reply, not 'we'll be right with you' at midnight.

From Essential, the compose box has AI tools: rewrite a rough draft into a clearer reply, translate a message, or suggest a reply based on the conversation so far. They save typing, especially for agents writing in their second language.

They don't replace judgement. An English-speaking agent can use translation to follow a message and draft an answer, but a customer who writes in Kuwaiti Arabic deserves a reply someone has read properly. We set these tools up as a first draft, and we still route Arabic chats to Arabic speakers wherever the team allows it.

Saved replies help too: answers for delivery times, the return policy and branch locations, written once in both languages and checked, so every agent gives the same answer in the same words.

Basic includes 3 users, and that is a hard cap: a fourth person means moving up a plan. It already gives you one WhatsApp number, one Instagram account and one website widget in the shared inbox, which suits a small shop where two or three people answer.

Essential includes 6 users and charges $18 a month for each extra one. It adds up to 5 teams, basic roles, round-robin assignment, 5 custom inbox views and human calling on WhatsApp. Advanced includes 10 users at $24 a month per extra user, up to 10 teams, 10 custom views, custom roles and number masking. Extra channels, such as a second WhatsApp number for another branch, are a $20-a-month add-on on Essential and Advanced.

Number masking deserves a thought in Kuwait. When agents can't see customers' numbers, they can't move a customer to their personal WhatsApp, and the relationship stays with the business when staff move on.