Chatbot
Software that holds an automated conversation with a customer. On WhatsApp it ranges from simple keyword rules to an AI agent that understands open-ended questions.
One term from the WhatsApp Business Platform glossary. Last updated 2026-07-25.
Rule-based bots match keywords or button taps to fixed responses. They are predictable and cheap, and they fail the moment a customer phrases something the author did not anticipate.
AI agents interpret intent rather than matching strings, which handles unanticipated phrasing but requires grounding in real business content to stay accurate. Most effective deployments combine both: structure where the answer set is fixed, AI where it genuinely is not.
Related terms
- Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
- A technique where an AI agent retrieves passages from your own knowledge base before answering, so replies are grounded in your documented policies and product facts rather than invented.
- Human handoff
- The transfer of a conversation from an AI agent to a person, triggered by topic, repeated failure to resolve, negative sentiment or an explicit customer request.
- WhatsApp Flows
- Structured, form-like screens that open inside a WhatsApp chat — dropdowns, date pickers, multi-step forms — so a business can collect structured input without free-text parsing.
See Chatbot in a real workspace
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