Wati provides several ways to organize your team and manage customer conversations. By using operator roles, teams, automation rules, and chat visibility settings, you can control who can access conversations, how chats are assigned, and how customer inquiries are routed to the right people.

This guide explains how operator seats work, the difference between roles and teams, how chat assignment works, and how to configure chat visibility for different business structures such as support teams, sales teams, and multiple branches.

Every Wati subscription plan includes a set number of operator seats, which determine how many operators can access the Wati workspace.

Wati’s Growth plan includes 3 operators by default. Pro and Business plans include 5 operators by default.

Additional operator seats can be purchased depending on your subscription plan.

The number of additional seats available and their pricing vary by plan.

Wati helps you organize your staff using roles and teams.

Each operator is assigned a role that determines what actions they can perform within Wati.

Examples of roles include:

Roles control permissions such as managing settings, viewing conversations, and accessing features.

Teams help you group operators based on their responsibilities.

For example:

An operator can belong to one or more teams.

Every Wati workspace automatically includes a Default Team.

New incoming conversations are assigned to the Default Team unless additional routing rules are configured.

Incoming conversations can be handled by:

When a customer sends a message:

When an operator replies to a conversation, that operator becomes the last assignee for the chat.

For example:

When the same customer contacts your business again, the conversation can automatically be routed back to Operator 1.

To use this behavior, you must configure a Last Assignee automation rule.

You can use automation rules to route leads from Click to WhatsApp Ads (CTWA) to the appropriate team, operator, or chatbot.

For example:

When a customer clicks the ad and sends the default message "service a":

Chat visibility settings allow you to control which conversations operators can access.

This feature is available on the Wati Business plan.

Consider the following setup:

If chat visibility restrictions are enabled for Operator 1:

This helps businesses restrict access to conversations and ensure operators only see the chats assigned to them.

This example shows how to structure teams, operators, and automation rules when managing multiple branches or stores.

Create automation rules to route conversations to the correct branch manager.

Rule 1

Rule 2

Admin (User 1)

Managers (Users 2 and 5)

With chat visibility disabled, managers can view conversations assigned within their team and continue supervising team activity.

Support agents (Users 3, 4, 6, and 7)

With chat visibility enabled, support agents can only view conversations assigned directly to them.

Enable chat visibility restrictions only for support agents who should handle their own assigned conversations.

Managers typically do not require chat visibility restrictions because they need visibility into conversations handled by their team members.

The number of operators included depends on the subscription plan. Wati's Growth plan includes 3 operators by default, while Pro and Business plans include 5 operators by default. Additional operator seats can be purchased depending on the subscription plan.

Roles determine what actions an operator can perform in Wati, such as managing settings, viewing conversations, and accessing features. Teams are used to group operators based on their responsibilities, such as customer support, marketing, or sales.

Every Wati workspace includes a Default Team automatically. New incoming conversations are assigned to the Default Team unless additional routing rules have been configured.

When a customer sends a message, the conversation is assigned to any configured automation, such as a chatbot, if one exists. The conversation is also assigned to the Default Team. Operators who belong to the Default Team, as well as admins, can view the conversation, and any authorized operator can reply.

Last Assignee routing automatically routes future conversations from the same customer back to the operator who most recently handled the conversation. To use this behavior, a Last Assignee automation rule must be configured.

Create a Click to WhatsApp Ad with a predefined message, such as "service a". In Wati, create an automation rule using the same keyword and configure an action such as assigning the conversation to a specific operator, team, or chatbot. When a customer sends the predefined message, the automation rule is triggered and routes the conversation accordingly.

Chat Visibility controls which conversations an operator can access. When chat visibility restrictions are enabled, an operator can only view conversations assigned directly to them and cannot view conversations assigned to other operators or the rest of their team. This feature is available on the Wati Business plan.

Managers should typically have Chat Visibility disabled so they can view and supervise conversations handled by their team. Support agents should typically have Chat Visibility enabled so they can only view conversations assigned directly to them.

Create separate teams for each branch or department and use automation rules to route conversations based on keywords. For example, messages containing "branch A" can be assigned to Manager A and Team A, while messages containing "branch B" can be assigned to Manager B and Team B. Managers can then assign conversations to support agents within their team while maintaining visibility of those conversations.