WhatsApp on May 7 announced the launch of “Business AI” – an artificial intelligence (AI) agent designed to help small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in India increase their productivity and streamline their operations.
This agent is accessible through the WhatsApp Business app and is available in all local Indian languages. Working on behalf of businesses, this agent can provide 24/7 feedback to customers, capture leads, book appointments, make product suggestions and help drive sales.
Ravi Garg, director of business messaging at Meta India, told Moneycontrol that WhatsApp has been pilot testing this feature with select businesses in India for the past few months. Apart from India, the feature is also available in some other markets like Brazil and Cambodia. Eligible businesses can set up this feature by going to the ‘Tools’ tab in the WhatsApp Business app and selecting ‘Your Business AI’.
How does WhatsApp’s Business AI Agent work?
Once set up, the Business AI agent learns from a merchant’s past business chats, profile information, and website content. This can be further trained and optimized using data from the merchant’s specific products and services, the existing product catalog on WhatsApp, or Meta Commerce Manager. This allows agents to provide personalized answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) and assist customers with questions related to products, services, pricing, discounts, and shipping details.
Garg said the feature will soon allow payments through UPI directly in the WhatsApp chat interface, and there are plans to integrate other payment options in the future. Businesses can also instruct the agent to transfer complex or sensitive conversations directly to the owner. Additionally, they can decide which customer segments the agent interacts with – such as only new customers, customers who came through ads, or all customers. Messages sent by agents to customers will be clearly tagged as ‘AI’. “We’ll start with text messages and images. Over time, as we gain a deeper understanding of the needs of businesses and their problems, we’ll introduce other AI capabilities – including video,” Garg said. He said the company has seen “early successes” during the pilot phase. He further added, “Over the past few years, we have consistently heard that managing a large number of customer inquiries with limited resources is the biggest challenge for small businesses. This is where we think AI can be a game-changer for them.” Gunveen Kaur, founder of ‘The Purple Sunset’ – who was involved in this pilot program – said that with the help of AI, she was able to directly fulfill 6 to 7 orders daily. He told that his sales have increased by 40%.
