WhatsApp has been the communication layer for businesses of all sizes around the world for years. Meta is now injecting AI into its layers to turn WhatsApp into a viable workflow software for small and medium-sized businesses.
The company announced Wednesday that it will now make its customer support AI bot, known as Meta Business Agent, available globally within WhatsApp. The announcement comes as Meta has been testing WhatsApp Business’s AI agent for nearly two years to support customers in countries such as India and Mexico.
According to Meta, AI agents can answer customer questions, recommend products, schedule appointments, identify sales leads, and reroute inquiries to agents if necessary. The company also allows bots to be used within Instagram DMs.
Meta said it is testing a way to provide business agents with a daily overview of chats that occurred during the night, providing insight. The company is testing the feature on some accounts in WhatsApp Business, Instagram Pro, Messenger, and Meta Business Suite.
The company said it is working on adding features such as conducting market research, highlighting product features, managing users’ calendars, and connecting with tools to extract competitive insights.
Meta said the company is also working on allowing agents to display businesses when users search for them or share contact details in chat. We’re also building a platform that allows large enterprises to create custom agents that can connect to systems like Shopify, Zendesk, and Shopee.
Meta plans to charge businesses a fee to use this AI agent by including it in some tiers of its WhatsApp Business Premium subscription. The company noted that large companies will pay agent fees based on the number of tokens they use.
This is critical for WhatsApp, which has relied on messaging ads and companies that pay for click-to-WhatsApp ads.
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