Salons, med spas, fitness studios, restaurants and clinics where most bookings start in a DM.
You answer the same price and address questions all day and still miss some.
Product questions, order status and “is this in stock?” arrive in Instagram, not in the helpdesk.
You sell through Instagram, run Meta ads for clients and need every lead counted.
Numbers from Sprout Social and Meta’s own messaging policy — customers expect an answer within a day, the platform expects a bot to answer within seconds.
consumers expect a brand to answer on social media within 24 hours or faster.
incoming Instagram messages a day for the average brand, up from 13 a year earlier — while the share answered within a day fell from 8% to 7%.
is Meta’s standard messaging window after a user writes; after that only a human agent may reply, for up to 7 days.
is how fast an automated bot must respond to any user input under Meta’s policy — slower bots risk messaging restrictions.
of consumers who reach out publicly expect a public reply first, before moving to DMs.
of daily Instagram messages get a brand reply — the rest wait or are lost, together with the leads in them.
Put your monthly volume into the calculator and see hours and dollars.
DM automation replaces the manual loop behind every Instagram or Facebook message — notice it hours later, answer the same price and address question again, paste the booking link, maybe write the contact down, forget to follow up — with a workflow that answers in seconds, books in the chat and saves every lead. For a salon, a studio, a clinic or a Shopify brand the Direct inbox is where sales start, and most of the time there is spent not on selling but on repeating the same answers and losing the ones that arrive at night.
We build it on the official Meta Messaging APIs rather than on browser bots. A new DM, story reply or keyword comment starts a run: a language model reads the message in the customer’s own words, answers routine questions from the knowledge base you approve, asks two to four qualifying questions and offers free slots from Calendly, Fresha, Vagaro, Square or Mindbody. The contact lands in HubSpot, GoHighLevel or a Google Sheet with the post or ad it came from. Complaints, custom prices, medical questions and VIPs are handed to a person in Business Suite with a summary, and automated messages on Facebook and Instagram stay inside the 24-hour window the policy requires.
Customers get an answer in seconds instead of the next morning, bookings happen in the thread, no lead is left in the inbox uncounted and your team only joins the conversations that need a human. Wireclad builds these workflows with n8n, the Meta APIs and language models around your existing booking tool and CRM, with the knowledge base and the hand-over rules fully in your hands.
The run path of a typical DM workflow. Each conversation travels it on its own; a complaint, a custom request or a VIP stops and goes to a person.
Meta webhooks for Instagram DMs, Messenger, story replies, mentions and keyword comments on posts and Reels start a run.
Pulls the thread history and the contact from your CRM so returning customers are recognised.
A language model reads the message in the customer’s own words — price, booking, address, complaint, partnership — and the tone.
Prices, hours, services and availability are answered from your knowledge base within seconds; anything else moves on.
Composes a short, on-brand answer from your approved prices, services and rules — never inventing an offer.
Name, phone or email, what they want and when — one question at a time, in the chat.
Reads availability from Calendly, Fresha, Vagaro, Square or Mindbody and books the chosen slot right in the DM.
Sends the confirmation and a reminder inside the 24-hour window; a reply of “reschedule” reopens the slot picker.
Creates or updates the contact in HubSpot, GoHighLevel or Google Sheets with source, interest and the post or ad it came from.
Complaints, negative tone, custom pricing, medical or legal questions and flagged VIPs are handed over.
Posts the thread summary to Slack or Telegram and moves the conversation to the Business Suite inbox with the Human Agent tag.
Whoever went silent after asking a price gets one polite follow-up while the window is still open.
Conversations, leads, bookings, top questions and response time — in Google Sheets or Looker Studio every Monday.
Typical minutes per conversation for a small business answering by hand. Your own numbers go into the calculator below.
Based on 11 min by hand and 1 min with the flow per item, from the table above.
The flow answers, books and records. People keep every conversation that needs judgement, and the knowledge base is yours.
Negative tone is detected and handed over at once; the bot never argues.
Discounts and non-standard requests are quoted by you, not guessed.
Med spas and clinics: anything about treatment or health goes to a qualified person.
Prices, promotions and rules are updated by you; the assistant only answers from what is approved.
Flagged contacts always reach a human.
Spam, abuse and borderline messages are decided by a person.
Flip a switch to hand a step to the flow or take it back.
Benchmarks from the 2025 Sprout Social Index and Meta’s Messenger Platform policy: customers expect an answer within a day and the platform expects a bot to answer within seconds — both are met by a flow that replies instantly and hands over cleanly.
We map the process as it runs today, count the minutes and agree what the flow must never do on its own.
A working flow on your real data, in a sandbox. You see every run and every exception.
Edge cases, approvals and alerts, then the switch-over — with the old way kept as a fallback.
Monitoring, fixes when a vendor changes a format, and a monthly report of hours saved.
Yes, through the official Instagram Messaging and Messenger Platform APIs — that is what we use, not browser bots or unofficial tools. We follow the policy: replies inside the 24-hour window, a bot that answers within 30 seconds, no unsolicited messages. That is what keeps an account safe.
Only a human can, using the Human Agent tag for up to 7 days after their last message; automated messages outside the window are not allowed. The flow schedules confirmations and follow-ups inside the window and leaves the rest to your team.
Keyword bots fire only on exact words. A language model reads “how much for two of us on Saturday?” and understands price, group size and date. We often keep ManyChat for comment triggers and put the assistant behind it.
Yes. The flow reads free slots from Calendly, Fresha, Vagaro, Square Appointments or Mindbody, books the chosen one and sends the confirmation and reminder in the same thread.
Every conversation creates or updates a contact in HubSpot, GoHighLevel or a Google Sheet with name, contact, interest and the post or ad it came from, so you finally see how many bookings Instagram actually brings.
Always. Your team answers from Meta Business Suite as usual; the moment a human replies, the assistant steps back for that thread. Complaints, custom prices and VIPs are handed over automatically with a summary.
It answers only from the knowledge base you approve and is instructed to hand over when a question is outside it. Prices and offers are yours to edit, and every reply is logged so you can review and tighten the rules.
Describe it in two sentences — we reply within a day with a workflow sketch.
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