What do you need help with?
Twenty-eight answers, grouped. If yours is not here, email support@opergen.com and a person writes back within a day.
Getting started
Installing WhatsAssist
Install from Google Play on an Android 10 phone or newer, sign in with Google, and answer the setup questions about your business. There is nothing to install on a computer and no number to register anywhere: it works from the phone you already answer on.
Granting notification access
Setup walks you through it, and it is the one permission the app cannot work without. Android puts it behind its own screen rather than a normal permission prompt, so the app opens Settings for you and you switch WhatsAssist on there. It is used to read incoming messages from the apps you connect and to send replies back through the same notification. You can revoke it in Android Settings at any time, and the app stops answering the moment you do.
Your first reply
Once setup is finished, the next customer who messages you gets answered without you doing anything. That is the default on every plan. If you would rather see each reply first, one switch turns automatic sending off and every reply then waits in the app for you to read, edit and send.
Memory and learning
How WhatsAssist learns your voice
From messages you actually sent. Send it a WhatsApp chat export and it picks up your sentence length, your habitual phrases and how you close a message. Voice is on the Pro and Max plans. On any plan you can set the tone yourself in Settings: how formal it is, whether it uses emoji, and what it signs off with.
What gets remembered, what does not
Every message in a conversation is kept, and on the paid plans what it learns about a customer carries from one conversation to the next: what they asked about, what they bought, how they like to be answered. Each messaging app keeps its own history, so the same person writing to you on Instagram and on WhatsApp is two conversations. Nothing you upload is used to train an AI model, ours or anybody else's.
Deleting your history
Account → Delete your account removes your account and your data. You type DELETE MY DATA to confirm and get an email when it is finished. Being straight about the state of it: the deletion is queued and we are still completing the parts of it that reach every one of our own systems, and we will not claim it is instant until it is.
Channels
Turning on WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business
Both are supported and both are separate apps to Android, so each is switched on separately. It replies inside whichever one the message arrived in, under your own name and your own number, using that app's own reply action on the notification.
Turning on Instagram DMs
Same as the others: switch Instagram on in the app and make sure Instagram itself is allowed to post notifications. If Instagram's notifications are muted at the Android level, nothing arrives for WhatsAssist to answer.
Turning on Telegram and Messenger
Both are supported and both work the same way. It answers inside the app the message came from and never forwards anything to a different one.
Choosing which apps it answers in
You choose. Connect all five or connect one, and it only ever looks at the apps you have turned on. The five are WhatsApp, WhatsApp Business, Instagram, Messenger and Telegram, and the list it reads from is the same list it replies in. It does not support Signal and it does not send SMS.
Business knowledge
Uploading your catalogue
Send it a PDF, a photo of a price list or menu, a WhatsApp chat export, or text you paste in. Those four are what it accepts. It reads them and proposes what it learned for you to approve.
Approving what a document taught it
Nothing is added behind your back. Every item a document produces is yours to approve or throw away before a single reply uses it, so a misread price never reaches a customer without passing you first.
Correcting a wrong price or policy
Edit the item and the next reply uses the new value. There is no re-upload and no waiting. If you have sent the same document twice, the repeat is skipped rather than duplicated.
Phone-specific setup
Xiaomi, MIUI and HyperOS
These phones kill background apps hard, and that is the single most common reason replies stop. Turn on Allow autostart for WhatsAssist, and set battery to Unrestricted or No restrictions. The app detects your make and shows you the exact screens after install, because the path moves between MIUI versions.
Realme and ColorOS
Same problem, same two settings: Allow background autostart, and battery set to Unrestricted. ColorOS also has a separate sleep-standby optimisation that should be off for WhatsAssist.
Samsung and One UI
Put WhatsAssist in Never sleeping apps, and turn off Put unused apps to sleep for it. One UI is gentler than MIUI or ColorOS but will still stop a background app it has not seen used for a few days.
Vivo, Oppo and OnePlus
Allow autostart, allow background activity, and set battery to Unrestricted. On some builds there is also a high background power consumption warning that has to be dismissed once.
Billing
Plans and pricing
Four plans: Free, Basic, Pro and Max. Free is 100 messages counted once, which never reset, and needs no card. Google Play sets the price in your own country and charges in your own currency, so the figure on the Play listing is the one you pay. The pricing page has what each plan adds.
Switching plans
Any time. Upgrading takes effect immediately. Downgrading takes effect at the end of the billing period you have already paid for, so you keep what you paid for until it runs out.
Cancelling
Account → Cancel subscription, or directly in your Google Play account. No call and no retention flow. The subscription runs to the end of the period you have paid for and the account then goes back to Free.
Refunds
Google Play's own refund window applies, which is 48 hours from purchase, and Account → Request refund takes you to it. For anything outside that window write to support@opergen.com and we will sort it out.
Privacy and security
What data we collect
The messages from the apps you connect, what you upload as business knowledge, your account and your app usage. Messages are read on your phone from the notifications you enabled, then sent to our servers to be answered, because the model runs there. That is not optional and there is no on-device-only mode. The privacy policy has the full table and the sub-processors page says who receives what.
Deleting your account
Account → Delete your account, confirmed by typing DELETE MY DATA. You get a confirmation email when it completes. See the note under Deleting your history about what that reaches today.
Exporting your data
By request. Write to support@opergen.com and we will put together a machine-readable copy by hand. There is no self-service export button yet and we would rather say that than point you at one.
Troubleshooting
Replies are not going out
Almost always one of three things, in this order. Notification access has been revoked, which Android does silently after some updates. Your phone has killed the app in the background, which is the phone-specific setup above. Or you have run out of messages for the period, which the app tells you on the home screen.
The app keeps stopping
That is the battery optimiser rather than a crash, on almost every phone that reports it. Work through the section for your make above. If it persists after that, write to us with your phone model and we will look at it.
Notification access keeps turning off
Android revokes it on some system updates and some manufacturers revoke it when an app has been unused for a few days. The app notices and tells you on the home screen. Re-granting it is Settings → Apps → WhatsAssist → Notifications, and adding the app to your autostart list makes it stick.
A reply came back in the wrong language
It answers in the language the customer wrote in, not the one you set, so a customer writing in English gets English even if your business language is Hindi. If the incoming message is very short, there may not be enough to judge from. You can set a reply language in Account for the cases where it cannot tell.
Still stuck?
Email us. We read every message and write back within a day. No tickets, no chatbots.