The situation
Every campaign ended the same way: hundreds of WhatsApp messages an hour, four sales associates answering from their phones, and replies slipping from minutes to hours. Most questions were the same — is it in stock, in which size, how do I pay.
The cost wasn't only overtime. Buyers who were ready to pay at 11 p.m. went quiet by morning, and the team spent its best selling hours copying stock levels into chat windows.
Where it broke
- 01Stock lived in the ERP; answers lived in people's heads. Every reply meant switching screens.
- 02Payment needed a call back or a store visit, so intent cooled while people waited.
- 03No queue and no context: when a conversation changed hands, the customer started over.
What we built
A bilingual agent sits on the existing WhatsApp number. It understands Gulf and Levantine Arabic as well as English, checks live stock through the ERP, reserves the item and sends a secure payment link — in one conversation, in seconds.
Anything sensitive — a complaint, a custom order, a high-value client — goes to a person through a hand-off queue, with the whole conversation and the customer's history attached. The team picks up exactly where the agent stopped.
- WhatsAppCustomer message, any hour
- AgentUnderstands intent in Arabic or English
- Stock & paymentsChecks availability, sends a payment link
- Sales teamReceives only the conversations that need a person
How we rolled it out
- Days 1–2Audit of 3,000 past conversations to find the twelve questions behind most of the volume.
- Days 3–6Agent, stock lookup and payment links built and tested against real conversations, in both languages.
- Days 7–9Shadow mode: the agent drafted replies, the team approved them, and tone and thresholds were tuned.
- Days 10–11Live on the main number, with hand-off rules signed off by the head of sales.
What changed
Replies now land in under two seconds at any hour. The team handles the conversations that need judgement — VIP clients, custom requests, complaints — and campaign nights no longer need everyone on their phones.
The team went back to selling instead of typing the same answer two hundred times a night.
Representative outcomes from comparable engagements.
What we'd tell another team
Start with the questions your people are tired of answering. Automating the boring 80% is what makes the remaining 20% feel human again.
