WhatsApp CRM guide: contacts, tags, custom fields and segments your team will actually use

Why most WhatsApp CRMs turn into a mess

This WhatsApp CRM guide is about one thing: keeping contact data consistent enough that you can trust a segment before you send ₹10,000 worth of marketing templates to it. Most teams start well, then end up with tags like VIP, vip, V.I.P and important, a city field that says "BLR" and "Bengaluru", and numbers without country codes. Every campaign after that is a guess.

The fix is a short plan before you import anything, and making the bots and the team fill the same fields the same way. In Broadchat everything below lives under CRM: Contact, Super Field, Tags, Segment, Boards, Imports, Exports and CRM Triggers.

Step 1: write a one-page data plan

Start from the messages you want to send, not from the data you happen to have. Rangoli Home, a home-decor brand selling online and from a Jaipur store, wrote this:

The rule of thumb: a field holds a value (which city, how much, when), a tag is a yes-or-no label you filter on. If you catch yourself creating tags like city-jaipur, city-pune… it should be a field.

Step 2: create Super Fields

Super Fields are Broadchat's custom contact fields. Open CRM → Super Field, add a field and fill Super Field Label and Data Type. Types include Text, Text (Multiline), Email, URL, Phone Number, Number, Amount, Decimal, Address, Date, Date-Time, Percent, Country, Location, Dropdown, Checkbox, Multi-Select Option and Language.

Each field has a Field ID (copy it from the list) that works as a variable such as {{city}} in chatbot messages and canned replies, and in template variables. A Default value is applied to new contacts, and a Dropdown field with Enable Board View becomes a Kanban board in CRM → Boards, useful for pipelines such as New → Quoted → Won.

Step 3: create your tags

Open CRM → Tags, click Create Tag and give each a Tag Name and Tag Color. Use prefixes and colours by family, so anyone can read a contact at a glance:

• Status (green): customer, lead, trade, vip
• Interest (blue): int-curtains, int-rugs
• Source (grey): src-ctwa, src-store, src-web
• Events (orange): bought-diwali-2026, demo-requested
• Hygiene (red): opted-out, wrong-number

Lowercase, hyphens, no spaces. Write the list in your team's handbook; tags typed on the fly are where mess begins.

Step 4: import existing contacts

Only import people who agreed to hear from you on WhatsApp; a purchased list or scraped numbers will damage your quality rating fast. Then:

1. Save the sheet as CSV, one row per contact, with a phone column. Numbers should include the country code (919876543210); if most do not, set the Default country code during import.
2. Open CRM → Imports and add a new import (or CRM → Contact → Add New Contact → Import via CSV).
3. Map columns: Full Name, WhatsApp Number (required), Email, Tags (tags that do not exist yet are created) and any Super Field.
4. Optionally add tags to everyone in this file (for example src-store), pick a Channel, and choose whether to update existing contacts.
5. Start the import and check the result in the import history. Rows without a valid number are skipped and reported.

Files can be up to 10 MB or 30,000 rows per import. Split larger lists.

Step 5: fill fields automatically

A CRM that depends on agents typing data stays half empty. Let conversations fill it:

• Chatbots: every Ask Question step has Save Response to; choose a Super Field. Save Variable Value writes any value to a field, and Add Automation App → CRM → Assign Tags to Contact (Creates Tag if Tag not exist) adds tags on a branch. See WhatsApp chatbot for lead generation for a full tagging design.
• Workflows: the CRM app has Create / Update Contact, Update a Custom Field and tag actions, so an order from your website can set last_order_date and tag customer.
• Agents: in CRM → Live Chat, the chat menu's Update Tags adds tags during the conversation; notes go on the contact's page in CRM → Contact.

Step 6: build segments from rules

A segment is a saved rule, not a frozen list. Open CRM → Segment, click Create Segment, name it and add conditions. Contacts that match are in the segment automatically and leave when they stop matching. Conditions can use system fields (Tag, Source, Opt-in (Subscribed), Channel, Contact Created Date, Last Message, Last Incoming Message, Full Name, WhatsApp Number, Email, Chat Status, Assigned To, Blocked) and any Super Field, joined with AND or OR.

Use a segment as a campaign audience in CRM → Bulk Campaign by choosing the Segmented audience. The count on the segment tells you how many people a campaign will reach before you spend anything; marketing templates to India cost ₹0.8631 per delivered message (Meta rate card effective 1 Oct 2026, excl. GST), so a 4,000-contact send is about ₹3,452 plus GST in Meta charges alone.

Step 7: keep opt-outs and data clean

Every contact has a Subscribed to broadcasts checkbox on its page. Campaigns sent to All contacts or a Segmented audience skip unsubscribed contacts; campaigns built from a pasted list or CSV (Quick) and Retarget audiences do not, so use segments for anything promotional.

When someone writes STOP, nothing changes on its own. Set up a Hot Keywords chatbot on stop and unsubscribe that confirms politely and tags opted-out, and have the agent who sees it untick Subscribed to broadcasts; add Tag doesn't have opted-out to your marketing segments as a second safety net. WhatsApp's policy requires you to honour opt-out requests; see WhatsApp opt-in best practices.

Once a month, spend ten minutes on hygiene: export contacts from CRM → Exports, look for missing country codes and odd tag spellings, merge or delete stray tags in CRM → Tags, and restore anything deleted by mistake from the contact list's trash (profiles, tags and fields are restored; messages are not). If another system is your main CRM, CRM → CRM Triggers can post contact events (created, edited, agent assigned, blocked and more) to its webhook URL.

For how WhatsApp's rules shape all this, start with what the WhatsApp Business API is; the team inbox and CRM page shows the features together, and agencies can offer the whole set-up to clients under their own brand with the white-label platform.