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For years, WhatsApp has been a communication layer for businesses of all sizes around the world. Meta is now infusing AI into that layer in a bid to turn WhatsApp into a viable piece of workflow software for small and medium businesses.
The company on Wednesday said it is making its customer support AI bot, now known as Meta Business Agent, available globally within WhatsApp. The launch comes as Meta has spent nearly two years testing AI agents in WhatsApp Business for customer support in countries like India and Mexico.
Meta said the AI agent can answer customer questions, recommend products, book appointments, qualify sales leads, and reroute queries to a person if needed. The company is also making the bot available within Instagram DMs.
Meta said it is testing a way for the Business Agent to provide daily briefings of chats that occurred overnight and provide insights. The company is testing this feature with select accounts on WhatsApp Business, Instagram Pro, Messenger, and Meta Business Suite.
The company said it’s working to add capabilities like doing market research, highlighting product features, managing users’ calendars, and connecting with tools to extract competitive insights.
Meta said it’s also working to enable the Agent to surface businesses when you search for one or share contact details in chat. And it is building a platform to let larger enterprises create custom agents that can connect to systems like Shopify, Zendesk, and Shopee.
Meta is planning to charge businesses for using this AI agent by including it in some tiers of its WhatsApp Business Premium subscription. The company noted that large businesses will pay for the agent based on how many tokens they use.
This is critical for WhatsApp, which has relied on businesses paying for messaging and click-to-WhatsApp ads.
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Ivan covers global consumer tech developments at TechCrunch. He is based out of India and has previously worked at publications including Huffington Post and The Next Web.
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