An Approval Queue for Owner-Run Shops: A Minimal State Machine

Description and use

An approval queue for owner‑run shops that defers sensitive replies until human approval, logs approver data, escalates delays, and integrates with common CRMs and WhatsApp APIs.

Problem

Owner‑run small businesses need fast customer responses without risking unsanctioned messages, especially for price, discount, delivery or appointment details.

Outcome

Implemented an approval queue that routes sensitive messages to human review, logs approver data, escalates delays, and integrates with common CRMs and WhatsApp providers, reducing refund disputes.

Workflow

• Receive inbound event
• Deduplicate and upsert enquiry
• If money language needed, enqueue for approval with draft
• Else if confidence below threshold, enqueue for human review
• Else apply safe update and send
• Escalate if queue time exceeds N minutes during opening hours
• Log approver ID and timestamp on approval
• Send approved message
• Reject or escalated paths handled accordingly

Evidence

Anything with a price, discount, delivery date or appointment slot never auto-sends.

Source

Approver id and timestamp are mandatory log fields. When a customer says "your assistant told me", you can look it up.

Source

If an item sits in the queue longer than N minutes during opening hours, it escalates to a second person.

Source

For a small shop, the "database" is often a spreadsheet or a lightweight CRM. That is fine.

Source

We integrate with all major CRMs (for example HubSpot, Zoho, Salesforce, Pipedrive and Freshsales, plus custom CRMs or Google Sheets setups) and work with all major WhatsApp Business providers and the official WhatsApp Business API (for example Meta Cloud API, Twilio, Gupshup, Interakt and WATI).

Source