Connect WooCommerce orders and customer messaging
Your store already knows the moment an order is placed, paid, sent or cancelled. Endelir turns those moments into an approved template message to the phone number on the order, and puts whatever the customer writes back into a shared inbox where a person can answer it. This connection is built and not yet switched on; the plain state of it is further down the page.
The email nobody opens, and the message you send by hand
WooCommerce sends an order email. It lands between a newsletter and a receipt from somewhere else. What you notice is not the unread email — it is the message two days later asking whether the order went through, from someone who paid you on Monday and has heard nothing since.
So somebody starts sending them by hand. At the end of the shift they work down the order list, copy an order number into a chat, and send the same sentence forty times. It holds together for a while. Then a busy week arrives, the overnight orders are missed, and the customer who was told nothing assumes the worst and opens a dispute rather than a conversation.
The store speaks for itself, once per order
Endelir connects to your store with a REST API key you generate in WooCommerce's own settings, and registers its own webhooks there. When an order is created, or its status changes, the store tells Endelir directly. Endelir reads the new status, picks the approved template you chose for that moment, fills in the values you mapped — order number, total, customer name, date — and sends it to the phone number on the billing details. Every send is logged against the order, so you can see what went out and what failed.
The plain state of it: this packaged connection is switched off in production today. It is written, wired and held closed until each integration passes live acceptance on real accounts, so what you are reading describes the connection when it opens rather than something to turn on this afternoon. The same order messages can go out now through Endelir's REST API, called from your store or from a small piece of code on your side. That route is open, and moving from it to the packaged connection later is a store address and a key.
How it works
- 1 You generate a key in WooCommerce The store's own REST API screen gives you a consumer key and secret. Those go into Endelir with the store address, and are checked against the live store before anything is saved.
- 2 Endelir registers the webhooks Two of them: order created, and order updated. Each is given a signing secret at that moment, and a delivery arriving without the matching signature is refused. No plugin to install, nothing added to your theme.
- 3 You approve the templates first An order message is one your business starts, so it uses a template Meta has approved in advance. Endelir finds them by name — woocommerce_order_confirmation and its siblings — so the naming is part of the setup rather than a detail.
- 4 You map the values Each numbered slot in a template is pointed at a field on the order: customer name, order number, total, status, date, payment method, billing or shipping address.
- 5 You choose the moments Confirmation, payment, tracking, delivery and cash-on-delivery each have their own entry in the settings screen and their own template. Cancelled, failed and refunded orders share one cancellation template.
- 6 An order moves A new order sends the confirmation. Processing sends the payment message, completed sends the delivery one, and cancelled, failed or refunded all send the cancellation. A move from pending to on-hold, or between on-hold and processing, stays quiet, and a status that arrives again unchanged sends nothing.
- 7 The reply lands with your team Anything the customer writes back opens a conversation in the shared inbox, with the order message above it, ready for a person to answer.
What this looks like in practice
Take a retailer selling kitchenware, busy enough that one person spends the last hour of every shift working down the WooCommerce order list and sending the same two sentences by hand. The orders that arrive overnight are the ones that get missed.
With the store connected, the confirmation would go out as the order is placed, and the payment message when the shop marks it processing. The person who used to send them answers the replies instead: a change of delivery address before dispatch, a question about whether a lid fits an older pan, a customer who ordered twice by accident and wants the second one cancelled. None of those come back from an email.
What happens when the customer replies
Who this suits
What to know before you set it up
An order update is a Utility message: it is about a transaction the customer has already made with you, which is the right category for a confirmation, a payment note, a dispatch note or a cancellation. Putting an offer inside it — a code for next time, a nudge to buy the matching one — changes what the message is. That is Marketing, it needs the customer's recorded permission, and it belongs in its own template. Keeping the two apart is the habit that keeps your template approvals coming. When the customer writes back, you have a service window in which your team can answer freely with no template at all.
What the connection carries is order events, and only those. Endelir hears about an order being created and an order changing status. It does not watch your checkout, so there is no abandoned-cart message in this integration. It does not issue refunds — refunding in WooCommerce sends the cancellation message, and the money moves through your payment provider exactly as before. A tracking message exists, but it fires only if your store actually sets a shipped status, which core WooCommerce does not; that comes from a shipping plugin. And nothing is written back to your store.
The order needs a phone number on the billing details, in full international form, or there is nobody to send to — worth checking your checkout before you connect anything. Templates are reviewed by Meta before they can be used, and that decision is Meta's rather than ours. Your number has to be connected to the WhatsApp Business Platform first, which means it can no longer be used in the WhatsApp Business app on a handset. How many messages your plan includes is on the pricing page, and the software enforces it exactly.
What to watch
- How many orders send a message at all, against orders taken
- Sends that failed, and why — a missing phone number is the usual answer
- How long after a status change the message actually goes out
- Replies per order message, and what they turn out to be about
- How many where-is-my-order questions still arrive by phone or email
- Cancellations and address changes that started as a reply
- Template rejections, and which moment each one was for
Related
Questions people ask
How does Endelir connect to a WooCommerce store?
You generate a REST API consumer key and secret in WooCommerce's own settings and paste them into Endelir along with your store address. Endelir checks the credentials against the live store before saving them, then registers two webhooks in the store: one for an order being created, one for an order being updated. Each webhook is given a signing secret at that moment, and a delivery that arrives without the matching signature is refused, so nobody can post invented orders at your workspace. There is no plugin to install and no code to add to your theme.
Which WooCommerce order statuses send a WhatsApp message?
A new order sends an order confirmation. After that the status decides: processing sends a payment confirmation, completed sends a delivery confirmation, and cancelled, failed or refunded all send a cancellation. Pending and on-hold send the confirmation, while a move from pending to on-hold, or between on-hold and processing, stays quiet, because those mean something to your warehouse and nothing to a customer. Which template each moment uses is set in the integration screen, so what goes out is decided by the templates you have approved. A tracking message exists as well, but it only fires if your store sets a shipped status, which core WooCommerce does not have.
Do I need approved templates for WooCommerce order messages?
Yes. A message your business starts uses a template Meta has approved in advance, and an order update is business-initiated by definition — the customer is not in a conversation with you at the moment their order is packed. Endelir finds the template by name, so the confirmation template is called woocommerce_order_confirmation and each other moment follows the same pattern, with a single generic template as a fallback if you would rather run one for everything. Once a template is approved you map its numbered slots to fields on the order. Approval is Meta's decision and takes as long as it takes, so submit the templates before you plan a go-live date rather than after.
Can Endelir send WooCommerce abandoned cart messages?
No. The connection carries order events — created, and status changes — and an abandoned cart is not an order, so nothing about it ever reaches Endelir. There is no cart-tracking screen in the product and no rule here that decides a checkout has gone cold. The other route is real: your own code, or a recovery plugin you already run, decides the checkout is stale, confirms no payment arrived, and calls Endelir's REST API to send an approved Marketing template. That message needs the shopper's recorded permission, which Endelir enforces at the send, and both the timing and the still-unpaid check stay on your side.
Do customers have to opt in to receive order updates?
An order update is a Utility message about a transaction the customer has already made with you, so it sits in a different place from marketing. Being clear at the checkout is still the right thing to do: say that order updates will be sent on WhatsApp to the number given, and ask separately, in plain words, if you also want to send offers later. The two must not be mixed. A promotional line inside an order confirmation is a Marketing message wearing a Utility label, and that is the practice that costs businesses their template approvals. Endelir refuses a Marketing template to a contact with no recorded consent, and honours an opt-out once it is recorded.
Can it confirm cash-on-delivery orders?
A COD confirmation template and its settings are part of the integration, but nothing in a standard WooCommerce install triggers it on its own: a cash order moves through the ordinary statuses, so what it sends is the order confirmation and later the delivery one. If you want the extra step — asking the customer to confirm they still want a cash order before you dispatch it — that is worth doing through the API, where your own code decides which orders are worth checking and can act on the answer. Either way the reply arrives in the shared inbox, so somebody sees it before the parcel leaves.
Can I use the WooCommerce connection today?
Not yet, and we would rather say so on the page than in the first call. The integration is built and wired, and it is switched off in production while each integration waits its turn for acceptance on live accounts. Until that switch opens, order messages from a WooCommerce store take the other route: your store, or a small piece of code beside it, calls Endelir's REST API with the phone number, the template and the order values, and Endelir sends it. That route is open now and the messages a customer receives are the same ones. If the packaged connection is what you need, say so on the call and we will tell you honestly where it stands.
Turn WooCommerce order events into timely customer conversations.
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