Set up a Support Assistant

A Support Assistant reads incoming messages and answers them for you, using what you tell it about your business. It handles the questions you answer twenty times a week so you can deal with the ones that need a person.

What it can and cannot do

It can: answer questions covered by the information you give it, in the language and tone you set, at any hour, instantly.

It cannot: know anything you have not told it, look up a live order, take a payment, or make a judgement call about a refund. When it does not know, it says so rather than inventing an answer.

It works alongside you, not instead of you

Every conversation still lands in Chatbox, and you can take over at any point. The assistant handles the first response; you handle what matters.

Create the assistant

Open AI Assistants under Automation in the sidebar.

Assistants sit under Automation, above the WhatsApp toolkit.
Click Create new assistant.

Everything you build here is listed on this page afterwards.
Choose Support assistant.

Support is the WhatsApp question-answering one. W2Shield is a different job — it moderates Instagram comments.

Step 1 — Assistant details

How it sounds. Four fields, none of which the customer sees directly.

Step 1 of 2, Assistant details, with fields for Assistant name, Persona, Primary language and Writing style — The name is for your list, not for customers — it is never used in a reply.

Assistant name — yours, up to 30 characters. Name it after the job it does, so a second assistant later is easy to tell apart.
Persona — how it sounds. Pick the one closest to how you talk to customers.
Primary language — a fallback, not a lock. The assistant mirrors whatever language the customer writes in; this is what it uses when that is unclear.
Writing style — how formal or brief the replies are.

Step 2 — Business information

What it knows. The business name, model and industry are required; the rest is optional but every field you fill is a question it can answer without you.

Step 2 of 2, Business information, with fields for business name, model, industry, address, city, state, postal code, country, contact number and email, operating hours, products and services summary, service areas and return policy — Operating hours, service areas and the returns policy are the three most-asked questions in most businesses. Fill them.

Then, in the same step:

The knowledge base box holding a written description of a property project, a note that media can be added after saving, an auto-reply cap of 15 and an optional handoff message, above the Create assistant button — 200 characters minimum, 15,000 maximum. The counter is the honest measure of how much your assistant knows.

Knowledge base — the About the business text is what it actually answers from. Write it yourself, or switch to Import from a document to pull the text out of a PDF or spreadsheet. This decides the quality of every answer it gives, so it has its own article: Give your assistant a knowledge base.
Media the assistant can send — images and videos it can reply with. Unavailable until the assistant is saved; come back and add them from the edit page.
Auto-reply cap — the maximum number of automatic replies one customer gets in 24 hours. The default of 15 is sensible. Past it the assistant stops and hands the conversation to a person.
Handoff message — what the customer is told, once, at that point. Leave it blank for the default.

Click Create assistant.

Activate it on a number

Creating it is not switching it on. A new assistant is a Draft and answers nobody until you give it a number.

The Activation card showing a Draft badge, a confirmation that the knowledge base is ready, a WhatsApp number selector and an Activate assistant button — The green line confirms there is enough in the knowledge base for it to work. Activation stays disabled until there is.

Pick the WhatsApp number it should reply from and click Activate assistant. It starts answering new incoming messages on that number immediately.

The assistant's card on the AI Assistants page, marked Active, showing the connected number, an assistant code, the persona and the language, with a Click to edit link — Active, and the number it is attached to. Everything is editable afterwards.

What it costs

You are charged per AI reply. A conversation where the assistant answers three times costs three AI replies.

The messages themselves are free — they are replies inside an open 24-hour window. The charge is for the AI, and it shows in your ledger and on the dashboard spend breakdown as AI replies. Rates are on the pricing page.

The auto-reply cap is what stops a stuck conversation running up a bill.

Getting good results

Write the knowledge base properly. Its answers are only as good as what you gave it. See the knowledge base article.
Test it as a customer. Message your own number and ask your five most common questions. Ask two things it should not know, and check it declines gracefully rather than guessing.
Read what it sends for the first week. Every wrong answer points at a gap in the knowledge base.
Keep the cap low to start. A handful of replies per customer per day is plenty while you are learning what it does.

Turning it off

Deactivate it from AI Assistants and it stops immediately. Conversations carry on as normal, answered by people.

If something goes wrong

It is not replying. Check it is Active and attached to the right number, and that your balance is not empty — no balance, no AI replies.
The answers are wrong. The knowledge base is wrong, out of date or missing the subject. Fix the source, not the wording.
It answers things it should escalate. Put the boundaries in the knowledge base: "Never quote prices for custom orders — ask the customer to wait for a person."
The same customer got a lot of replies. Lower the auto-reply cap.
It replies in the wrong language. Check the primary language, and note that it will often mirror the language the customer writes in — usually what you want.
It never got past Draft. Activation needs a knowledge base of at least 200 characters and a number selected.