A chatbot for WhatsApp, for a small business

Two different things with the same name

When someone offers you ‘a chatbot for WhatsApp’, they may mean two things that have little in common.

The menu bot. It answers with buttons or numbers: 1 to book, 2 for opening hours, 3 to speak to us. It doesn’t understand text, only the option you pick. It is predictable and easy to build, and it breaks the moment a customer writes the way people write: ‘hi, have you got anything Thursday afternoon for my daughter?’

The AI assistant. It reads the message as it comes, works out what is being asked and answers in normal sentences. It is also far riskier when badly set up, because a language model always has an answer, even when it doesn’t know one.

Neither is the same as the automatic replies in WhatsApp Business. The greeting, the away message and quick replies are fixed texts. They understand nothing and book nothing, but never get anything wrong.

Why most of them fail in a small business

A large company gets the same few questions again and again. A small business with a diary gets ‘have you got a slot?’, ‘how much is it?’, ‘can I move Thursday?’. That is where chatbots fail, nearly always for four reasons.

It can’t see the real diary. It replies ‘we’ll call you to confirm’ or sends a link to a form. The customer wanted a time, not paperwork.

It can’t say ‘I don’t know’. A badly configured AI always answers. Missing a price, it makes one up, and you are the one explaining it to the customer.

It won’t hand over. The customer writes ‘I want to talk to someone’ and gets the menu again.

It pretends to be a person. It signs off as ‘Laura, reception’, and the customer finds out on the third odd reply. Beyond trust, there is the law: under EU law (AI Act, art. 50), people must be told when they are talking to an artificial intelligence.

What about Meta’s own AI?

Meta has its own AI agent inside the Business app. Its help centre page (read on 23 September 2026) says it is only available in some countries and to selected businesses, it answers from your profile, catalogue and website, and turning it on can switch off the greeting and away messages and broadcast lists. Meta collects those chats to improve its AI, and says itself that AI-generated messages may not be accurate. Booking into your diary is not on its list of things it does.

Six things to ask of an assistant

If something answers in your business’s name, these are not extras. Ask to see each one working:

1. It works from your real diary. It sees the actual gaps, with your staff and your appointment lengths, offers specific times and books where you see it.
2. It says it is an AI in the first message. The law requires it, and it avoids the awkward moment later.
3. ‘Person’ always works. The customer types it at any point and the whole conversation reaches you, so nobody repeats themselves.
4. It doesn’t make things up. It answers only from what you gave it (services, prices, hours, menu) and, when it doesn’t know, it says so and alerts someone.
5. It takes the deposit in the chat, where you decide to ask for one, and the booking is confirmed when the payment lands.
6. It gives you a daily summary. Conversations, bookings, deposits, and which chats went to a person and why.

And before you sign, ask whose name the WhatsApp account is in. It should be your business’s: if you change provider, the number stays with you.

What a good one sounds like

A sample conversation with a fictional business:

Customer: Hi, have you got a hygiene appointment this week? Afternoon ideally.

Assistant: Hi, I’m the AI assistant for Clínica Alameda. I have Thursday at 17:30 or Friday at 18:15. Which suits you better? If you’d rather speak to a person, type ‘person’.

Customer: Thursday.

Assistant: For a first visit we ask for a 20 € deposit, taken off the treatment. Here is the payment link: once it goes through, you’re booked.

Assistant: Booked ✓ Thursday at 17:30 at Clínica Alameda. If you can’t make it, tell us here and we’ll find another time.

It introduces itself, says how to reach a person, offers two real times, takes the deposit and confirms. Asked whether a pain is serious, it gives no opinion and passes the chat to someone at the practice. The day then fits on one page. A fictional example: 31 conversations, 9 bookings, 180 € in deposits and 2 handed to a person. Those two are the ones you read.

What it costs

The WhatsApp Business app is free. An assistant runs on the WhatsApp Business Platform, where Meta charges per message. Until 30 September 2026, replies within 24 hours of the customer’s last message are free. From 1 October, Meta’s pricing documentation says each business number gets 1,000 free replies a month and pays for the rest at the utility rate of the customer’s country. For UK numbers the official calculator gave £0.0159 per message on 23 September 2026.

By our own arithmetic, a practice sending 1,500 replies a month to UK customers would pay Meta 500 × £0.0159 = £7.95. A business in Spain pays the rate of each customer’s country, not its own. On top comes whatever the provider charges: details in how much WhatsApp Business costs.

What an assistant won’t fix

• A messy diary. If it isn’t up to date, it will offer slots that don’t exist.
• Anything that needs judgement. A complaint, an odd case, a question about a treatment: it should pass these to someone.
• Emergencies. It doesn’t diagnose or triage, and it should say so.
• Low volume. Three messages a day, answered in time, only need a good away message and a few quick replies.

Where to start

For two weeks, note how many messages arrive, when, and how many are about booking. If they are few and come when you can answer, you don’t need an assistant. If they land while you are with a customer or at night, you do.

Conserjía is that kind of assistant: it works from your diary, says it is an AI, replies in under a minute at any hour and, when it doesn’t know, tells a person. To see it, book a demo and bring three real conversations from your WhatsApp.