WhatsApp has introduced a new AI-powered feature for businesses. It's called Meta Business Agent. The tool is designed to help businesses reply to customers faster and answer common questions on its own. At the moment, the feature is available only to selected businesses in limited countries.
Meta Business Agent is an artificial intelligence (AI) service from Meta for businesses using WhatsApp Business. It can answer customer questions based on the information a business shares with it, such as its catalogue, website, business profile, opening hours, address and policies.
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What Can Meta Business Agent Do?
Once enabled, Meta Business Agent can help businesses with several everyday customer queries. It can:
Answer questions about business hours and location
Share details about products and services
Recommend products to customers
Provide pricing information
Answer questions about discounts, payment and shipping
If a business decides to reply to a customer manually, the AI will stop responding in that chat unless the business turns AI replies back on.
Customers will also be informed when they start chatting with a business that uses the feature. They will see the following message: "AI from Meta receives chats to improve AI quality and generate messages for this business."
Meta says that messages sent or received in chats using Meta Business Agent may be collected to improve its AI. However, if a business deletes Meta Business Agent, new chats will no longer be shared for AI improvement.
How To Set Up Meta Business Agent
Businesses can turn on the feature directly through the WhatsApp Business app.
To get started:
Open the Tools tab.
Tap AI agent.
Follow the on-screen instructions.
Scan the QR code if prompted and continue the setup on your mobile device.
Accept the terms and complete the onboarding process.
After setup, businesses are encouraged to teach the AI more about their business. They can upload documents and images, add example responses, recommend bestselling products and share purchasing information. This helps the AI provide better answers to customers.
Businesses Can Choose When AI Replies
Meta Business Agent offers different reply settings. Businesses can choose whether the AI should respond to:
All new one-to-one chats
Chats except with saved contacts
Chats started through Facebook or Instagram ads
Stay paused while continuing to learn from conversations
Businesses can also enable or remove the AI from individual chats whenever they want.
A Few Things To Know
There are a few limitations. Turning on Meta Business Agent may affect features like broadcast lists, disappearing messages and greeting or away messages. Existing linked devices will also be disconnected during setup, although most can be linked again later.
Businesses can also download the data shared with Meta or delete the AI agent completely if they no longer want to use it.
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Since the feature is still being rolled out, not every business will be able to access it immediately. Meta also notes that AI-generated replies may not always be accurate, so businesses should review important conversations whenever needed.
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