A WhatsApp chatbot for business answers your customers on WhatsApp through Meta's official API. Kivo Marketing builds the AI agent kind: it reads live availability and prices from your own system, replies in your customers' language and takes the booking. Al Teu Aire uses one to book events for more than 40 venues in Barcelona.
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What should a WhatsApp chatbot for business actually do?
Most WhatsApp bots answer questions. They read from a script or a document, reply politely, and then ask the customer to call, email or wait for someone. The conversation ends. The work doesn't get done.
The useful version finishes the job. A customer asks if Saturday is free, what it costs for twenty people and whether they can book it. The agent checks, quotes and books, in the same chat, at whatever hour the message comes in.
- Answer questions from your own information, not from generic copy.
- Check availability and prices live in the system you already use.
- Take bookings, orders or quote requests and register them where your team works.
- Qualify leads and send them to your CRM with the context of the chat.
- Hand the conversation to a person when it needs one.
WhatsApp AI agent or chatbot: what's the difference?
People use the two words as if they meant the same thing. They don't, and the difference decides how much you can hand over. A WhatsApp AI agent still talks like a chatbot, but behind every message it can read from and write to your systems.
| Menu chatbot | AI chatbot | AI agent connected to your system | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How it replies | Buttons and fixed answers | Free text, from a document or an FAQ | Free text, from your live data |
| Understands typed questions | Only the ones it expects | Yes | Yes |
| Quotes a real price | Only if someone types it in by hand | Only if the document is up to date | Yes, it reads it at that moment |
| Books or takes an order | No | No | Yes, inside your system |
| Where it breaks | Anything off the menu | Outdated or invented answers | Loose rules or bad data, which is what the brief is for |
Do you need the WhatsApp Business API for a chatbot?
For anything beyond canned replies, yes. The free WhatsApp Business app is built for a person typing on a phone. It doesn't connect to your calendar, your store or your CRM.
A WhatsApp Business API chatbot runs on Meta's business platform instead. We build on the WhatsApp Cloud API, the version Meta hosts itself, so the agent is your own software talking to your own systems, not a bot rented from a builder platform.
An AI booking assistant on WhatsApp, in production: Al Teu Aire
At Al Teu Aire, a WhatsApp agent built by Kivo books events for more than 40 venues in Barcelona.
Prices aren't pasted into a prompt. The agent reads availability and prices live from the panel the team already runs, so what a customer reads on WhatsApp is what the team sees on screen. It answers in Spanish and Catalan.
Under the hood: TypeScript, WhatsApp Cloud API, OpenAI, PostgreSQL, Chatwoot and Docker. Production code, not a chatbot builder template. The full booking cycle, from availability to reminders, is on WhatsApp appointment booking system.
How we build a WhatsApp chatbot automation
The same four steps as every Kivo project, with one team from the first call to the last line of code. Nothing gets handed to a third party halfway. A WhatsApp agent is one piece of our wider AI automation work.
- Brief. Which conversations the agent takes, where the data lives, which rules it can't break and when a person steps in.
- Design. Tone of voice, conversation flows and the answer for each edge case, written to sound like your brand.
- Build. Production code, not a prototype, connected to your calendar, booking panel, store or CRM.
- Launch and sharpen. We read real conversations, fix the spots where the agent hesitates and keep adjusting the rules after go-live.
Who a WhatsApp AI agent is for
It makes sense where WhatsApp is already the front desk: event venues and restaurants that take bookings by chat, clinics and med spas that schedule appointments, stores answering stock and shipping questions, and B2B sellers taking orders from distributors.
It's also worth it when messages arrive at hours nobody is there to answer. An agent doesn't clock out at six.
If you get a handful of messages a day and they're always the same, you probably don't need one yet. Tell us what comes in and we'll say so straight.
Work we have shipped
- Al Teu Aire
A WhatsApp agent that books events for more than 40 venues in Barcelona, reading live availability and prices from the team's own panel and answering in Spanish and Catalan. TypeScript, WhatsApp Cloud API, OpenAI, PostgreSQL, Chatwoot and Docker.
See the project
Frequently asked questions
How much does a WhatsApp chatbot for business cost?
It depends less on WhatsApp than on what the agent has to do. Answering questions from your information is the small version. Checking availability, quoting and booking inside your system is the bigger one, and we quote it after the brief. On top come running costs: what Meta charges for certain messages, AI model usage and hosting. Our WhatsApp AI agent cost guide breaks them down.
Is there a free WhatsApp chatbot for small businesses?
The WhatsApp Business app is free and covers greeting messages, away messages and quick replies. All three are set up inside the app, with no code. For a small business with a few chats a day, that's a reasonable place to start.
Can I connect ChatGPT to WhatsApp Business?
Not the ChatGPT app, but the same kind of model, yes. The agent calls a language model through its API, with your rules and your data around it. Since January 15, 2026, Meta's terms for the WhatsApp Business Platform don't allow general-purpose AI assistants, so the agent sticks to your business: bookings, orders and customer service. Kivo works with the OpenAI and Claude APIs in production, and Al Teu Aire's agent runs on OpenAI.
Can a WhatsApp chatbot message customers first?
Yes, with message templates that Meta approves in advance. When a customer writes to you, Meta opens a customer service window and the agent can reply freely. Once it closes, only an approved template can restart the conversation. Booking confirmations and reminders usually go out that way.
Can a WhatsApp chatbot use buttons?
Yes. The API supports reply buttons and lists, which work well for short choices like picking a date or confirming a booking. An AI agent doesn't depend on them, though: the customer can just type the way they talk, and it still understands. Good flows mix both.
Can the agent answer in English and Spanish?
Yes. The language model behind the agent can reply in English or in Spanish, and in the brief we decide how it picks: following the customer's language, or asking at the start. Al Teu Aire's agent already answers in Spanish and Catalan in production. Kivo Marketing works in English and Spanish, with teams in Miami and Barcelona.