Blog & Updates
By Olamilekan and Ruut CSM
By Olamilekan and Ruut CSM
Recent updates announcements and blogs
Important WhatsApp Pricing Update
Important WhatsApp Pricing Update — Effective October 1, 2026 Meta has announced upcoming changes to WhatsApp Business messaging pricing, which will take effect from October 1, 2026. If your business uses WhatsApp through Ruut Chat or Convert, here’s what you need to know. 💬 Customer support messages will now be charged From October 1, Meta will begin charging for service messages, messages your business sends when replying to customers within an active WhatsApp conversation. Previously, these conversations could be handled without a per-message Meta charge during the customer service window. This means businesses using Ruut Chat for WhatsApp customer support may begin seeing Meta messaging charges for some customer conversations. 🎁 Your first 1,000 service messages every month are FREE There’s good news. Meta is introducing a new monthly free tier. Every WhatsApp Business phone number will receive 1,000 free service messages every month. You will only begin paying Meta's service-message rate from the 1,001st message. The allowance resets every month and applies separately to each WhatsApp Business phone number. 📢 Marketing, Utility & Authentication pricing is also changing Meta is also updating WhatsApp rates across several countries for: • Marketing messages • Utility messages • Authentication messages such as OTPs • Service/customer-support messages For businesses using Convert to send WhatsApp campaigns, notifications, OTPs or transactional messages, your messaging costs may therefore change depending on the destination country and message category. What does this mean for Ruut Chat? If you use WhatsApp inside Ruut Chat to communicate with customers, nothing about the way you work needs to change. Your team can continue receiving WhatsApp conversations, replying from the Ruut Inbox, assigning conversations to agents, using Sage AI and managing customer support as usual. The difference is that from October 1, Meta may charge for service messages once your business exceeds its monthly free allowance. What does this mean for Convert? If you use Convert for WhatsApp marketing, OTPs, notifications or transactional messaging, Meta's updated WhatsApp rates will automatically affect the underlying cost of applicable WhatsApp messages. We're reviewing the new pricing across supported markets and will make sure pricing inside Convert remains as clear and transparent as possible. You don't need to do anything right now These changes are coming directly from Meta/WhatsApp, not Ruut. We are updating Ruut Chat and Convert to properly account for the new WhatsApp pricing structure before it takes effect. Key date: October 1, 2026. We'll share any additional information you need before the changes go live. Thank you for continuing to trust Ruut to power your customer communication. 💛 — The Ruut Team Announcement for WhatsApp changes coming soon…
Introducing Ruut Live Chat 2.0: Your Website Is No Longer Just a Website
For years, live chat widgets have followed roughly the same formula: a small bubble sits at the bottom of a website, a visitor clicks it, types a message, and waits for someone to respond. Live chat has traditionally been simple: a visitor opens a widget, sends a message, and waits for a reply. With Ruut Live Chat 2.0, we wanted to make that experience much more useful. The new widget is not just a place to start a conversation. It is now a complete customer engagement layer for your website — combining messaging, help content, announcements, product cards, availability, and ongoing conversations in one place. The idea is simple: **Your live chat should help customers do more than just send a message. ** A new Home experience The biggest change in Live Chat 2.0 is the new Home screen. Instead of opening directly into an empty chat, customers are welcomed into a branded experience where they can quickly understand who they are speaking with, whether your team is available, and what they can do next. From Home, they can: - Start a conversation - Return to existing messages - Access help content - View important updates - Discover products, offers, or announcements It makes the widget feel more like a small customer portal than a traditional chat box. Cards for announcements, products, and updates Businesses can now use Cards inside the widget to highlight important information. A card can include an image, title, description, and call-to-action. You can use this to promote a new product, announce a feature launch, share an event, communicate an outage, highlight an offer, or guide customers through onboarding. For example: Power Marketing with Convert The messaging infrastructure for modern business. Learn more This turns your website traffic into another communication channel for your business. Messaging is still at the centre Customers can easily choose Ask a question and start a conversation with your team. But they are no longer forced into chat immediately. They can first explore information, find an answer themselves, or return to an existing conversation. That creates a much cleaner experience for customers who may not necessarily need to speak with an agent. Persistent conversations The new Messages section gives customers a dedicated place to return to previous conversations. A customer can send a message, leave your website, and come back later without feeling like they are starting from zero. This makes Live Chat 2.0 feel less like temporary website chat and more like ongoing business messaging. Help directly inside the widget Not every question needs a support agent. The Help section gives customers direct access to useful support content from inside the widget. Instead of searching through your website or opening another page, customers can find answers where they are already asking for help. The flow becomes simple: Find an answer yourself when possible. Start a conversation when you need someone. Clear team availability Customers can also immediately see whether your team is currently available. Messages such as “We are away at the moment” help set the right expectations while still allowing customers to leave a message. Your support experience does not have to disappear simply because your team is offline. Built around your brand Live Chat 2.0 is also designed to feel like part of your website. Businesses can shape the experience using their own: Logo, business name, colours, welcome message, background imagery, cards, calls-to-action, and customer-facing content. The customer should feel like they are interacting with your business, not someone else's software. More than customer support The new widget can support much more than support conversations. Support teams can answer questions and share important updates. Sales teams can turn website visitors into conversations. Marketing teams can highlight campaigns and launches. Product teams can promote new features. Operations teams can communicate service changes. One widget can now play several roles depending on what your customer needs. The beginning of a bigger Ruut experience Live Chat 2.0 also creates a stronger foundation for the rest of Ruut. A customer might first contact your business through Live Chat, continue through WhatsApp, receive an email, and later call your team. Those should not feel like completely separate interactions. They are all part of one customer relationship. That is the direction we are building toward with Ruut.
Introducing Ruut Voice: Your Business Calls, Finally Connected to Your Customers
Sometimes a message isn’t enough. A customer wants to speak to someone. A sales prospect has questions. A support issue is too complicated for back-and-forth messages. That’s why we built Ruut Voice — a business calling system built directly into Ruut Chat. With Ruut Voice, your team can make and receive calls, route them to the right people, record conversations, view transcripts, track performance, and keep call activity connected to the customer’s wider history. And because many customer conversations already happen on WhatsApp, Ruut Voice also brings WhatsApp calls into your customer support workflow. The goal is simple: Your phone calls should not exist outside your customer experience. One business number for your team Ruut Voice gives your business a dedicated phone number that customers can call. Instead of relying on personal phone numbers or several disconnected lines, your business can operate from one central number while Ruut handles what happens behind it. That number can serve your: - Customer support team - Sales team - Operations team - Billing team - Account managers To the customer, it is one business number. To your team, it can power an entire call operation. Make and receive calls directly from Ruut Your team can receive customer calls inside Ruut and also make outbound calls when needed. This is useful when a support issue needs a quick conversation, when a sales representative needs to follow up with a prospect, or when an account manager needs to speak directly with a customer. Instead of copying numbers between different systems, the call becomes part of the same workflow your team already uses. Make and receive WhatsApp calls too For many businesses, especially across Africa, WhatsApp is already one of the main ways customers communicate with them. So we are bringing calls from WhatsApp into Ruut too. When you connect your normal WhatsApp account to Ruut, your team can manage supported WhatsApp calls alongside the conversations they already handle through Ruut. This means a customer who normally chats with your business on WhatsApp can also call when a conversation is easier to resolve by speaking to someone. Your team does not have to treat that call as a completely separate interaction. WhatsApp messages and WhatsApp calls can become part of the same customer relationship your team manages in Ruut. For businesses already using WhatsApp heavily for support, sales or operations, this gives your team another way to help customers without forcing them onto a completely different channel. Know who is calling One of the biggest problems with traditional business phone systems is context. A customer may have already spoken to your team through WhatsApp, email or live chat, then call later and have to explain everything again. Ruut Voice is designed to reduce that. When a customer calls, the goal is to connect the call to the customer you already know. That means your team can understand who is calling and, where available, see the wider history of that relationship. Different channel. Same customer. Call recording and transcripts Important calls should not disappear after someone hangs up. Ruut Voice supports call recording, helping teams review conversations, investigate issues and improve agent training. Calls can also be transcribed into text, making it easier to quickly understand what happened without replaying an entire recording. This gives your team a clearer record of customer conversations and creates a stronger foundation for follow-up. Call routing, ring groups and queues As your business grows, every call should not go to the same person. Ruut Voice allows businesses to structure how calls move across the team. You can use call routing to direct calls to the right department, ring groups to alert multiple available agents, and queuesto manage customers when several people call at the same time. For example: Sales → Sales team Support → Customer support Billing → Finance The customer still calls one number. Ruut handles the complexity behind the scenes. Understand your call operation Ruut Voice also gives businesses visibility into what is happening across their calls. You can better understand things like call volume, answered and missed calls, call duration and team activity. This makes voice measurable in the same way modern businesses already measure support tickets and messaging conversations. Voice works better when it has context The bigger idea behind Ruut Voice is not simply adding a phone feature to Ruut. It is connecting voice to the rest of the customer journey. A customer might first reach you through Live Chat. Later they message you on WhatsApp. Then they call your business number — or call you directly through WhatsApp. To the customer, these are not different relationships. They are talking to one business. Ruut is being built around that same idea. WhatsApp messages, WhatsApp calls, email, live chat and business phone calls should all contribute to one continuous customer history. Get started with Ruut Voice Want to bring your business calls and customer conversations into one place? You can get started with Ruut Voice by: - Emailing us at [email protected] - Starting a conversation with us through Live Chat - Booking a 30-minute demo with our team Book a Ruut Voice demo We’ll help you understand the best setup for your business, connect your channels and get your team ready to start taking calls with Ruut.
Introducing Ruut Mobile v2.0: Customer Conversations, Built for Wherever Work Happens
Customer conversations do not stop when you leave your desk. A customer might send a WhatsApp message while you are on your way to a meeting. A sales lead may reply after work hours. An urgent support issue may need to be reassigned while you are away from your computer. That is why we rebuilt the Ruut mobile experience. Ruut Mobile v2.0 is designed to give support, sales, and operations teams a clearer and faster way to manage customer conversations from anywhere. It is not simply a smaller version of the Ruut dashboard. The experience has been redesigned specifically for mobile, helping agents quickly understand what is happening in their inbox, identify conversations that need attention, and continue helping customers without losing important context. A Better Mobile Inbox The inbox is at the centre of Ruut Mobile v2.0. When you open the app, you should be able to understand your conversations almost immediately. Instead of opening every conversation individually to figure out what is happening, the new conversation list surfaces important information directly from your inbox. From one screen, you can quickly see: - who the customer is - the latest message - who sent the latest message - the communication channel - conversation priority - conversation status - labels attached to the conversation - assigned agents - how recently the conversation was updated - whether the conversation is private - the conversation ID The goal is simple: give your team enough context to know what requires attention before opening the conversation. The Anatomy of the Ruut Mobile v2.0 Inbox Every part of the new inbox has been designed to communicate something useful. Here is what you can now see and do. 1. Conversation Search When your inbox contains hundreds or thousands of customer conversations, scrolling is not enough. Ruut Mobile v2.0 includes conversation search directly from the inbox. Agents can quickly find conversations using the information associated with a customer or conversation rather than manually searching through long lists. This becomes especially useful when a customer calls your business and says: “I sent you a message earlier.” Instead of asking them to explain everything again, an agent can quickly find the existing conversation and continue from where the customer left off. 2. Recipient Information Every conversation clearly shows the customer or recipient involved. Profile pictures, customer names, and conversation information make it easier for agents to visually identify who they are speaking with. This is particularly important for teams handling many conversations simultaneously. Instead of every message feeling like an anonymous support ticket, agents retain the human context behind each conversation. 3. Conversation ID Every conversation has a unique identifier. Ruut Mobile v2.0 makes the conversation ID visible directly from the inbox. This can be particularly helpful for internal troubleshooting, support escalation, audit trails, or situations where team members need to reference a specific customer interaction. For example: Conversation #36 can be referenced internally without ambiguity, even if several customers have similar names. 4. Conversation Priority Not every conversation should be treated equally. Some customers may simply be asking a general question, while another customer may be dealing with a failed transaction, an urgent delivery problem, or a time-sensitive request. Conversation priority helps teams quickly distinguish conversations that require faster attention. Instead of agents treating the inbox like one long chronological list, priority indicators make important conversations easier to spot. This is especially useful for larger support teams where supervisors need to ensure urgent issues do not disappear inside a busy inbox. 5. Conversation Filters Sometimes an agent does not need to see everything. They may only want to see: - conversations assigned to them - open conversations - unresolved conversations - conversations from a particular channel - conversations with specific labels - priority conversations The new filtering experience makes it easier to narrow down the inbox and focus on the conversations that matter at that moment. For teams managing large volumes of messages, this can significantly reduce inbox noise. 6. Conversation Channel Ruut brings customer conversations from different channels into one place. That means the same inbox may contain interactions coming from WhatsApp, live chat, email, and other connected channels. Ruut Mobile v2.0 clearly shows the channel associated with each conversation. Agents can therefore understand where the customer contacted the business without opening the conversation first. This becomes particularly useful for businesses that operate customer support across multiple channels. Instead of switching between different applications, agents can work from a unified Ruut inbox. 7. Conversation Labels Labels help teams organise conversations based on their own workflows. A business might use labels such as: Customers Sales Lead Payment Issue Delivery VIP Refund Technical Support or any other category relevant to the business. In Ruut Mobile v2.0, labels are visible directly within the conversation list. That gives agents another layer of context before opening a conversation. A conversation labelled Payment Issue, for example, immediately communicates something different from one labelled General Enquiry. 8. Customer's Last Message One of the most important parts of a customer support inbox is knowing what the customer said last. Ruut Mobile v2.0 surfaces the customer's latest message directly from the inbox. This means agents can quickly scan through conversations and understand what customers are waiting for. If a customer simply replied: “Yes.” the agent can see that activity immediately. If another customer has sent a longer request, the inbox provides a preview so the agent can decide which conversation needs attention first. 9. Agent's Last Message Context works both ways. It is equally important to know whether the last message came from the customer or from your team. Ruut Mobile v2.0 makes this distinction clearer. For example, seeing: “Kindly, check for the update.” lets an agent quickly understand that someone from the team has already responded. This reduces duplicate responses and helps multiple agents collaborate on the same customer inbox without stepping on each other's work. Know Who Is Waiting on Whom This is one of the subtle but important improvements in the mobile experience. When managing many conversations, agents constantly need to answer one question: Are we waiting for the customer, or is the customer waiting for us? By clearly surfacing the latest message and conversation state, Ruut makes that easier to understand. That means agents can spend less time opening conversations just to determine whether any action is required. 10. Conversation Status Conversation status tells the team where an interaction currently stands. For example, conversations may require attention, be assigned, or already be progressing through your team's workflow. Status indicators make this visible directly from the conversation list. For team leads, this also provides a quicker way to understand how work is distributed across the inbox. 11. Conversation Time Timing matters in customer experience. A customer waiting nine minutes and a customer waiting several hours should not necessarily be treated the same way. Ruut Mobile v2.0 displays how recently activity occurred within each conversation. You can quickly see whether a conversation was updated: 9 minutes ago 10 minutes ago or at another recent point in time. This makes it easier to identify conversations that may have been waiting too long. Combined with conversation priority, it gives agents a much clearer picture of what deserves attention next. 12. Assigned Agent Ruut is designed for teams, not just individual inboxes. Each conversation can be assigned to the right person responsible for handling it. Ruut Mobile v2.0 makes assignment information visible directly from the inbox. This means team members can quickly understand: Who owns this conversation? It reduces the possibility of two agents replying to the same customer simultaneously and makes accountability much clearer. It also helps supervisors distribute conversations across available team members. 13. Private Conversations Not every conversation should be visible to everyone. Some interactions may contain sensitive information or may only be relevant to specific members of your organisation. Private conversation indicators help agents immediately identify conversations with restricted visibility. This gives organisations more flexibility when managing sensitive or specialised customer interactions. Built for Teams That Are Always Moving Ruut Mobile v2.0 is particularly useful for teams that are not always sitting behind a computer. That could include: - customer support teams - sales teams - operations teams - founders - account managers - field teams - relationship managers - supervisors A support manager can check the inbox while away from the office. A sales agent can respond to a prospect immediately. An operations manager can assign a customer issue to the right team member. A founder can check important customer conversations without opening a laptop. The mobile app keeps the team connected to the customer regardless of where work is happening. One Customer, One Continuous Conversation One of the biggest problems with traditional business communication is fragmentation. A customer messages the company on WhatsApp. Later they send an email. Then they call. Another employee responds. Eventually nobody knows the complete story. Ruut is designed around a different idea: The conversation should belong to the business, not to an individual employee's phone or inbox. That means customer context can remain available to the team even when another agent needs to take over the conversation. Ruut Mobile v2.0 extends that same experience to mobile. Agents can pick up conversations with the context they need instead of asking customers to repeatedly explain themselves. Built for More Than Customer Support Although conversations are central to Ruut, the mobile app is not only designed for traditional support teams. The same inbox can support different parts of the customer journey. Support Respond to questions, complaints, requests, and customer issues. Sales Follow up with prospects, respond to enquiries, and continue conversations with potential customers. Operations Coordinate requests, assign conversations, and ensure customer issues reach the correct team. Account Management Keep important customer relationships accessible even when account managers are away from their desks. The result is one shared communication layer across the organisation. Designed for Faster Decisions The biggest change in Ruut Mobile v2.0 is not one individual feature. It is information density without complexity. An agent should be able to glance at the inbox and understand: Who contacted us? What did they say? Which channel did they use? How long have they been waiting? How important is the conversation? Who is responsible for it? What category does it belong to? Has someone already replied? When those answers are visible without repeatedly opening conversations, teams can work considerably faster. Your Customer Inbox, Wherever You Are Customer experience increasingly happens in real time. Customers expect businesses to respond across WhatsApp, chat, email, calls, and other communication channels without having to understand how the organisation works internally. Ruut Mobile v2.0 brings that unified experience closer to the people responsible for those conversations. A clearer inbox. Better conversation context. Faster search. Better organisation. Clear ownership. And the ability to manage customer conversations wherever work happens. Welcome to Ruut Mobile v2.0. Your customer conversations. Your team. One inbox. Now built for mobile.