Guide to Self-serve WhatsApp AI Agents: Sales, Support, and Lead Qualification

Interakt’s Self-Serve WhatsApp AI Agents help businesses automate customer conversations on WhatsApp using AI-powered Sales, Support, and Lead Qualification agents.

These AI Agents work alongside your existing automations, workflows, and custom auto-replies. The AI Agent responds only when existing automations do not handle the customer query.

What are Self-Serve AI Agents?

With Self-Serve AI Agents, businesses can:

• Answer customer queries 24/7
• Recommend products from their Meta catalog
• Capture and qualify leads on WhatsApp
• Reduce manual support workload
• Hand over chats to human agents when required

The setup process is fully self-serve and requires no coding or technical expertise.

Types of AI Agents

1. Customer Support Agent

The Customer Support Agent acts as an AI FAQ assistant.

It answers customer queries using:

• Your website content
• Uploaded documents
• Business details provided during setup

Example Use Cases

• Product FAQs
• Shipping & delivery questions
• Refund policies
• Service-related queries

2. Sales Agent

The Sales Agent helps customers discover products directly on WhatsApp.

It uses:

• Your Meta catalog
• Website content
• Uploaded documents

to recommend relevant products based on customer queries.

Example Use Cases

• Product recommendations
• Catalog browsing
• Shopping assistance
• WhatsApp commerce journeys

Important Requirement

To use the Sales Agent, your Interakt account must have a connected Meta catalog.

3. Lead Qualification Agent

The Lead Qualification Agent automatically collects customer information.

You can configure questions such as:

• Name
• Email address
• Phone number
• Business requirement

The collected data is mapped directly to Interakt contact traits.

Example Use Cases

• Real estate lead collection
• Consultation requests
• Demo booking flows
• Service inquiries

How Self-Serve AI Agents Work

AI Agents work together with your existing:

• Workflows
• Custom auto-replies
• Automations

Existing automations are triggered first.

If no automation matches the customer query, the AI Agent responds automatically.

This allows businesses to maintain strict automation flows while still handling open-ended customer conversations using AI.

How to Set Up Self-Serve AI Agents

Setting up AI Agents requires only 2 simple steps.

Step 1: Add Business Context

1. Navigate to: Automation → WhatsApp AI Agents

2. Click Start Free Trial.

3. Click on Build Your AI Agent

Add Business Information

Interakt automatically:

• Scrapes your website
• Indexes your website pages
• Uses the information to train the AI Agent

You can also:

• Add additional URLs manually
• Add business descriptions
• Upload supporting documents

And retrain the agent to be more accurate

Step 2: Configure Your AI Agents

You can individually enable or disable:

• Customer Support Agent
• Sales Agent
• Lead Qualification Agent

Each agent includes:

• A pre-configured AI prompt
• Editable instructions
• Customizable behavior

You can modify the prompts based on your business needs.

Configure Customer Support Agent

1. Click on the toggle on the right-hand side to enable the Agent
2. Uploading the document is optional, but it will help you ensure that the Agent has all the necessary details to handle the customer queries. 
3. You can upload more than one document at a time, but the max size should not exceed 20 MB. 

Configure Lead Qualification Questions

For the Lead Qualification Agent:

1. Add your qualification question
2. Map it to an Interakt contact field

Example

Current Limits

• Up to 4 lead qualification questions can be configured

Configure the Sales Agent

To enable the Sales Agent:

1. Connect your Meta catalog
2. Ensure your catalog is synced with Interakt

The AI uses your catalog data to recommend products automatically.

Recommended Catalog Fields

For best performance, ensure your catalog includes:

• Product category
• Description
• Image URL
• Product type

Auto-Handoff to Human Agents

You can enable Auto-Handoff during setup. The hand-off will come into play when and if the AI agent fails to perform the required action. Just slide the toggle to activate the hand-off.

When enabled:

• If the AI cannot answer a customer query,
• The chat is automatically assigned to a human agent
• Existing assignment rules are followed

If disabled:

• The AI continues handling the conversation without human escalation

Please note that this feature is only relevant  if you have setup rules for auto-chat assignment. If you have not set this up or are not on a plan which gives you auto chat assignment, this feature will not work.

Note – You can enable Hand-off only for the Agents that you have made live. 

How to Test Your AI Agent

Before going live, you can safely test your AI Agent.

Test Mode Setup

1. Add up to 4 WhatsApp numbers
2. Enable Test Mode
3. Scan the QR code using a whitelisted number
4. Start testing the bot

Only whitelisted numbers can interact with the test bot.

Real customers will continue experiencing normal workflows until the bot is published live.

Going Live

Once testing is complete:

1. Click Go Live
2. Test mode is disabled automatically
3. The AI Agent becomes available for all customers

Please note: Initial AI training may take some time after publishing

Once you have made the AI Agent live you can check out the dashboard for an overview –

The dashboard focuses on essential performance indicators to help you understand the AI’s impact on your customer interactions:

1. Messages Answered: You can see the total count of messages successfully handled and responded to by the AI agents
2. Human Handovers: It tracks how many conversations were automatically handed over to human agents because the AI could not resolve the query. 

Plan Eligibility

Self-Serve AI Agents are available on:

• Growth Plan
• Advanced Plan

Starter plan users can view the feature but must upgrade to use it.