WhatsApp Business is an app, not an answer
It gives your team a nicer inbox. It does not reply to anybody. Every message in it is still a message one of your people has to read and type back to.
Which is manageable at thirty messages a day and impossible at three hundred. Messages get missed rather than declined; a customer who waited four hours does not complain, they just buy from whoever answered first. That loss is invisible because it looks like nothing happening.
The assistant sits on the same number and answers straight away, in the customer’s language, from the documents and catalogue you gave it. It understands the voice notes, which is most of what makes WhatsApp hard to automate. And your team can step into any thread and step back out again.
What it handles without you
Listened to, not left unplayed
The two-minute rambling voice note with three questions in it. This is the single biggest reason WhatsApp inboxes back up, and it is handled.
It reads what they send
A PDF quote, a photograph of a receipt, a screenshot of an error. Read and answered rather than "please email that to us instead".
Your team steps in, and back out
Any thread can be taken by a person mid-conversation and handed back to the assistant afterwards. The customer sees one continuous conversation.
Appointments made in the thread
Availability checked against your real calendar, the slot taken, the confirmation sent. No link to a booking page and no back-and-forth about times.
Whatever they wrote in
Detected per message rather than per contact, because people switch. Nobody is asked to choose a language before they can ask a question.
The right person gets the outcome
After a conversation ends, a summary goes to whoever needed it. Your team reads what happened rather than scrolling to work it out.
The same customer, not a new one
Someone who messaged on WhatsApp and then rings the phone is recognised as the same person, with what was already said.
Outbound, within the rules
Template messages to a segment, with opt-outs honoured immediately and a per-message record. The rules here belong to the platform, and they are enforced.
WhatsApp is Meta’s network and its rules apply: each business needs its own verified Business Account, and the assistant has to be scoped to defined tasks rather than sold as a general-purpose bot. Onboarding is a few days, not a few minutes.
What actually arrives in a business WhatsApp
"Are you open?" at eleven at night
Inbound · knowledge basePerhaps a third of all volume is three questions: are you open, where are you, how much. Answered instantly forever, which is the whole return on this on its own.
“We’re open till six tomorrow, and we’re on the corner by the station — shall I send the pin?”
A tenant reporting a leak
Escalation · ticket raisedCaptured properly with the address, the flat and the urgency, raised as a numbered ticket, and pushed to whoever is on call rather than sitting in an inbox until Monday.
The same order question in a voice note
Voice note · understoodTwo minutes of speech containing an order number, a complaint and a question about delivery. All three picked out and answered.
A customer who wants to talk instead
Handover · to a callSome conversations are faster spoken. A call link goes into the thread and the conversation continues on the phone with everything already known.
Do I need a new number?
The quickest route is a number from us. You can keep your existing one if you detach it from its current Meta Business profile first, which is a short but fiddly job we will walk you through.
Will it answer things it should not?
It answers from what you gave it and says it does not know otherwise. If it is not in your documents, your catalogue or your connected systems, it does not come out of the assistant.
Can we still just reply ourselves?
Always. Any conversation can be taken over at any point, and handed back when you are done. Some businesses run it as a first responder and take over half the threads — that is a normal way to use it, not a failure of it.
One platform fee. Seats only when you want people. No minimum, no term.