What a WhatsApp AI chatbot does
It handles the company’s WhatsApp number at any hour. Unlike menu bots with numbered options, it understands messages written in the customer’s own words, including transcribed voice notes, and answers with the business’s real information: prices, stock, opening hours, order status or the requirements for a procedure. When a request goes beyond what it can resolve, it passes the conversation to a person with a summary.
What it can handle
- Frequent questions about products, services, terms and hours.
- Price and availability questions connected to real inventory.
- Taking orders and preparing them for the team to confirm.
- Appointments, bookings, confirmations and reminders.
- Qualifying sales inquiries before passing them to a salesperson.
- Complaint follow-up with case number and status.
The official WhatsApp Business API
The chatbot connects through Meta’s official WhatsApp Business Platform, known as the WhatsApp Business API, not through tools that imitate WhatsApp Web, which can get the number banned. The official platform requires a Meta business account, a verified number and approved message templates to contact a customer more than 24 hours after their last message. Within those 24 hours, replies are free-form. The customer must also have agreed to receive messages from the business.
What WhatsApp allows and what it does not
Since 2026, WhatsApp Business terms do not allow using the platform to offer general-purpose AI assistants. They do allow a company to use AI to serve its own customers: questions, orders, bookings, support and sales for its business. The chatbot is designed within that framework, focused on the company’s operation and with handoff to people.
How much a WhatsApp chatbot costs
There are three components. Development, which depends on integrations (catalogue, inventory, calendar, CRM) and the number of flows. AI model usage, proportional to the number of conversations. And Meta’s charges: since July 2025 WhatsApp charges per template message by category (marketing, utility or authentication) and country. Since October 2026, replies within the 24-hour window opened by the customer are also charged once a monthly free allowance per number is used up, and utility templates sent inside that window are charged too. Before starting, we estimate the monthly cost with the company’s real volume.
Connected to the rest of the business
A chatbot connected to nothing ends up saying “an agent will contact you”. Value appears when it checks the catalogue, records the order, creates the contact in the CRM for WhatsApp or books the appointment in the system the company already uses. If orders are the core of the business, see order and inventory management.
When it hands off to a person
When the customer asks, when the request is sensitive or not covered, when there is a complaint or when the system does not have the information with enough certainty. The person receives the history and the reason for the handoff, so the customer does not have to repeat everything. The chatbot does not invent prices, deadlines or conditions to close a conversation.
What is measured
Requests resolved without intervention, first response time, correct handoffs, orders or bookings generated and abandoned conversations. Answers and rules are adjusted every week during launch based on that data.