Your agent had a great call. The customer asked for the brochure, and the agent said it would be sent. A week later the customer rings to ask where it is. You open the workflow, and it looks fine.
We have covered what workflows are for. This is the troubleshooting list. Each cause below looks the same to the customer, which is to say nothing happens.
1. It was never switched on, or the edit was never saved
Only an active workflow runs. And your edits are not live until you press Save. Someone may have built a new branch on Friday, tested it, and closed the tab. The canvas shows the issues count, which lists what is missing before it can switch on. Check that first.
2. The contact came before the workflow
A workflow runs from the moment you switch it on, and it doesn't act on contacts or calls from before. If you switched on a New lead workflow on Wednesday, Tuesday's leads get nothing. For older contacts, run a campaign or a Re-churn round.
3. The channel is disconnected or not verified
If a channel is disconnected, the workflow stays on, but those messages are not delivered until you reconnect it or pick another. On the Integrations page, Connected only means the details are saved. Verified means a test passed. Some providers can't be tested without sending a real message, and say so in amber. Disconnecting an account stops every workflow step, no-answer WhatsApp and alert that sends through it, straight away. The confirmation lists them first, so read it.
4. WhatsApp's 24-hour rule
Plain WhatsApp text does not reach a customer who has not written to you in the last 24 hours. For most follow-ups to someone who has only spoken with you on a call, that is the case. So the step needs an approved template, approved on your own WhatsApp Business account. See our note on the 24-hour window.
5. It is waiting on purpose
Messages to customers wait out 9 pm to 9 am, unless you turn that off on the Compliance page. Calls wait for the calling window, 9 am to 9 pm IST. A Wait step pauses the steps after it, and only those. So a run that looks stuck may be doing what you told it. Run history shows waiting time apart from running time, which makes this easy to tell.
Deleting a workflow drops every run part-way through a wait, so those follow-ups never go out. If you want to replace one, build the new one and let the old one drain before you delete it.
6. A step did not do its job
A run fails when any step did not do its job, and the row says so. The reason may be a number on your Do-Not-Call list, which blocks calls and WhatsApp as it should, or an empty wallet, which stops calls. A disabled step is skipped, and a disabled condition takes its Yes path, which can send people down a branch you never meant for them. If you disable something while debugging, write down what you touched.
A special case: the agent said it would send something
An agent cannot send a message by itself. An agent sends only through a workflow with the trigger Agent sends during a call. The agent offers what the trigger names, the caller agrees, and the workflow sends it. If that workflow isn't there, your agent's promise is empty. Build with AI checks scripts for sends the tools cannot do, but a script you wrote or edited by hand can still say it.
Search your scripts for the words “send”, “WhatsApp” and “message”, and match each to a workflow.
How to test without messaging anyone
Test workflow and Test from here send nothing, call nobody and change no contact. Use those first. Then do one real run on your own phone number, added as a contact. That real run is what catches the template that was never approved and the channel that was never verified. A rehearsal can't catch those, since it sends nothing.
Remember that a send step messages real customers and a Call contact step places a real, billed call, once the workflow is on. A workflow run has no price of its own. Messages go out on your own connected account, so your provider bills you for them.
Make somebody responsible
Each of these failures is quiet, so they tend to be found by customers. Give someone a weekly look at run history. If you move to a plan that doesn't include workflows or a channel, they are paused or stop sending, and nothing is deleted. The count and channels per plan are on the pricing page.