Glossary41 terms, each on its own page

WhatsApp Business and conversational sales, term by term

Forty terms, each answered in two sentences and then properly: the 24-hour window, templates, WABA, quality rating, opt-in, click-to-WhatsApp ads, qualification, pipeline.

The WhatsApp Business Platform

The accounts, numbers, approvals and limits Meta runs.

BSP (Business Solution Provider): A BSP, or Business Solution Provider, is a company Meta has listed as a partner for the WhatsApp Business Platform. Historically the only way to get the API; since the Cloud API, any tool with an approved Meta app can connect a number, and the badge mostly signals scale rather than access.
Business Verification: Business Verification is Meta checking that a business is real: legal name, address, phone or website, matched against a document such as a GST certificate or a certificate of incorporation. Without it a WhatsApp number is capped at 250 new conversations a day and the display name stays unverified.
Embedded Signup: Embedded Signup is Meta's pop-up flow that connects a business's WhatsApp number to a software tool: you log in to Facebook, pick or create a business portfolio and a WhatsApp account, verify the number by SMS or call, and the tool receives permission to send and receive on it.
Messaging limit (tiers): The messaging limit is how many unique customers a WhatsApp number may start a conversation with in a rolling 24 hours: 250 before Business Verification, then 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 and unlimited as the number sends at volume with a good quality rating. Replies to customers who wrote first never count.
Meta Business Portfolio: A Meta Business Portfolio (formerly Business Manager) is the top-level account that holds a business's Facebook Pages, Instagram accounts, ad accounts and WhatsApp Business Accounts, and the people allowed to work on them. Every WhatsApp number on the API sits inside one.
Official Business Account (green tick): An Official Business Account is a WhatsApp number Meta has marked with a green tick and the business name shown in place of the number. It is granted at Meta's discretion to notable brands; Business Verification is required but does not guarantee it.
Phone number ID: The phone number ID is the identifier Meta gives each WhatsApp number on the Business Platform. Software sends messages to the ID, not to the digits, and an inbound webhook names the ID so the tool knows which number the customer wrote to.
Quality rating: The quality rating is Meta's green, yellow or red score for a WhatsApp number, based on how customers react to its messages over the last seven days — blocks, reports and the reasons given. Red for long enough lowers the messaging limit or pauses the number.
WABA (WhatsApp Business Account): A WABA — WhatsApp Business Account — is the container Meta creates for a business on the WhatsApp Business Platform. It owns the phone numbers, the message templates, the sending limits and the billing; one business portfolio can hold several.
WhatsApp Business API: The WhatsApp Business API (now the WhatsApp Business Platform, or Cloud API) is Meta's programmatic way for a business to send and receive WhatsApp messages through software rather than a phone. It is what lets a team, a CRM or an AI answer on one number.

Messages, templates and the window

What can be sent, when, at what price.

24-hour window (customer service window): The 24-hour window opens each time a customer messages a business on WhatsApp and closes 24 hours after their last message. Inside it the business may send any free-form message; outside it, only an approved template can be sent, at the template's price.
Authentication template: An authentication template carries a one-time code — for a login, a sign-up, a transaction. Meta writes the body for you (the code as {{1}} plus a fixed sentence), offers a copy-code or one-tap button, and charges ₹0.115 per message in India.
Catalog message (product message): A catalog message shows products from a business's WhatsApp catalogue inside the chat — one product, or up to thirty in sections — with a name, a price, a picture and a button to add to a cart. The catalogue is set up in Commerce Manager and linked to the WhatsApp number.
Click-to-chat link (wa.me): A click-to-chat link is a URL — https://wa.me/ followed by a number with its country code — that opens a WhatsApp chat with that number in one tap. Add ?text= and a message to pre-fill the customer's first line. It works on any phone with WhatsApp installed and on WhatsApp Web.
Interactive message (buttons and lists): An interactive message is a WhatsApp message with buttons the customer taps instead of typing: up to three reply buttons, or a list of up to ten options behind one button. Sent inside the 24-hour window as a free-form message; a tap comes back as a normal reply.
Marketing template: A marketing template is any business-initiated WhatsApp message that promotes: an offer, a launch, a reminder to finish a purchase, a newsletter. It is the most expensive category (₹0.86 per message in India), needs the customer's opt-in, and is the one Meta pauses first when quality drops.
Message template: A message template is a pre-approved WhatsApp message a business may send outside the 24-hour window. Meta reviews the wording once; the business then sends it any number of times with the variables — a name, an order number, a date — filled in per customer.
Opt-in (consent): An opt-in is the customer's clear agreement to receive WhatsApp messages from a business — a ticked box on a form, a reply to a message, a number typed into a sign-up. Meta requires one before any marketing template is sent and may ask a business to show how it was collected.
Opt-out (STOP): An opt-out is the customer saying stop — 'STOP', 'unsubscribe', 'बंद करो', or a tap on an opt-out button — after which a business may not send them marketing. A good tool records it in any language, applies it before every send, and keeps the record even if the contact is deleted.
Service conversation: A service conversation is one the customer started: they messaged the business, the 24-hour window opened, and the business replied with free-form messages. Free in India until 2026-10-01; from then each business reply inside the window is charged ₹0.115.
Utility template: A utility template is a WhatsApp message about something the customer already asked for or bought — an order confirmation, a delivery update, an appointment reminder, a payment receipt. It is the cheapest business-initiated category (₹0.115 per message in India) and Meta reclassifies it as marketing if the wording promotes anything.
Webhook: A webhook is how Meta tells a business's software that something happened on WhatsApp: a message arrived, a message was delivered or read, a template was approved. Meta sends an HTTP request to a URL the software registered; the software answers and acts on it.
WhatsApp Flows: WhatsApp Flows are forms that open inside a WhatsApp chat — a booking form, a lead form, a survey — built in Meta's Flow Builder and attached to a message as a button. The customer fills it without leaving the chat, and the answers come back to the business as structured data.

Ads that lead to a chat

Click-to-WhatsApp, lead forms and what comes back.

Attribution: Attribution is working out which ad, campaign or channel a customer came from, and crediting the revenue to it. It is only as good as the trail: a click ID on the landing URL, a referral on the first WhatsApp message, a code in a Google ad, and a record that keeps them all on one person.
Click-to-WhatsApp ad (CTWA): A Click-to-WhatsApp ad is a Facebook or Instagram ad whose button opens a WhatsApp chat with the business instead of a website. The customer's first message arrives with the ad's ID attached, so the business knows which ad brought them, and replies are free for 72 hours.
Conversions API (offline conversions): The Conversions API is how a business tells Meta what happened after the click — a lead was qualified, a deal was won — from its own systems rather than a browser pixel. Google's equivalent is the Data Manager API. Reported outcomes let the ad platform optimise for customers, not clicks.
Lead form ad (Meta lead generation): A lead form ad is a Facebook or Instagram ad that opens a short form inside the app — name, phone, a question or two — pre-filled from the person's profile. The submissions land in Meta's Leads Center and, through the API, in whatever CRM the business connects.
Touchpoint: A touchpoint is one recorded contact between a person and the business: an ad click, a message either way, a form submission, a product sent, a payment. Attribution, follow-up timing and the customer timeline are all read from the list of touchpoints, which is why it is kept complete and never edited.

Selling through conversations

Leads, qualification, pipeline and the words a CRM uses.

AI sales agent (vs chatbot): An AI sales agent reads a customer's message and answers it — in their language, from the business's own knowledge and catalogue — then asks the qualifying questions, writes the answers onto the lead and moves it forward. A chatbot walks a customer through a menu somebody drew; an agent has the conversation.
Customer record (contact): A customer record is one person, once: their WhatsApp number, email and Instagram handle on the same row, every conversation on any channel in one thread, every ad click, form, deal and payment on one timeline. Two records for one person is the bug a CRM exists to prevent.
DPDP Act (India's data protection law): The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 is India's law on personal data: a business needs a lawful basis (usually consent) to process it, must tell people what it collects and why, must delete it when asked or when the purpose ends, and must keep it safe. For a business messaging customers, it is the reason opt-ins and erasure requests exist.
Drip campaign (sequence): A drip campaign is a series of messages sent on a schedule — day 0, day 3, day 7 — to people who have not yet replied, stopping the moment they do. On WhatsApp each step is a template; on email each is a mail from the business's own domain with a reply address a person reads.
Human handover (takeover): Human handover is an automated conversation being passed to a person — because the customer asked, because a rule said so (a refund, a complaint, a price outside the list), or because a person chose to step in. The AI goes quiet on that thread until it is handed back.
Lead qualification: Lead qualification is deciding whether an enquiry is worth a salesperson's time, by learning a few facts — what they want, when, for how much, whether they can decide. A qualified lead has answered those; a disqualified one has answered them the wrong way; everyone else is still being asked.
Lifecycle stage: A lifecycle stage is where a contact stands with the business: new, qualified, proposal, won, lost — the names are the business's own. Moving a contact forward can require facts (no 'proposal' without a budget), and the pipeline board's columns are the same stages, so a contact and its deal never disagree.
Pipeline (deals and opportunities): A pipeline is the list of deals in progress, each with a value, a stage and an owner, usually shown as columns on a board. A deal (or opportunity) is a customer's specific intent to buy something: the products they asked about, at the catalogue price, moving from first contact to paid.
Shared inbox (team inbox): A shared inbox is one queue of conversations from every channel — WhatsApp, email, Instagram DM, Messenger — that a whole team works from, with an owner per conversation, a note of who is typing, and the customer's record beside the thread. It replaces one phone passed around the office.
Speed to lead: Speed to lead is the time between a customer's first message and the business's first real reply. Under a minute, the customer is still in the conversation; after an hour, they have usually asked somebody else. It is the single number that most changes how many enquiries become sales.

How Linkubit says it

The product's own terms, defined once.

Agent rule (Linkubit): An agent rule is a line the AI cannot cross, enforced in code before an action and before a reply leaves: no discounts beyond the ones listed, no price not read from the catalogue, hand refunds to a person, never promise a delivery date. A rule the agent would like changed becomes a request for a human — it can draft one and can never approve one.
Credit (Linkubit): In Linkubit one credit is one AI reply: the agent reads the customer's message and answers it. Lighter work costs a fraction of one — campaign messages, emails, minutes of a voice note, pages of knowledge — and messages coming in, your team replying, and reading your own data cost nothing. Meta's per-message fee is separate and billed by Meta to you.
Reverse trial: A reverse trial starts a new account on a paid plan's features for a fixed time and then lands it on the free plan rather than switching it off. Linkubit's is fourteen days of Pro with no card; afterwards the workspace continues on Free with everything set up still in place.

The longer answers are in the guides; the numbers are on the cost calculator and the pricing page.

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