Meta announced that its AI agent for WhatsApp Business has been launched globally, aiming to further build WhatsApp into a workflow software that can be used by small and medium-sized enterprises. Meta said that this customer service AI robot is now called Meta Business Agent. After nearly two years of testing in markets such as India and Mexico, it has now been officially opened to users around the world.
The agent can be used to answer customer questions, recommend products, book appointments, screen leads, and transfer conversations to human agents when necessary.
In addition to WhatsApp Business, Meta has also extended this bot to the Instagram direct messaging scenario. The company is also testing new features, including generating daily briefings and providing insights on outstanding chats overnight, with the test currently covering select accounts across WhatsApp Business, Instagram Pro, Messenger and Meta Business Suite.
Meta also revealed that it plans to let the agent take on more tasks in the future, such as market research, highlighting product features, managing user calendars, and connecting related tools to extract competitive intelligence. In addition, the company is also developing the ability for the system to proactively display merchants when users search for merchants or share contact information in chat, and is building a customized agency platform for large enterprises that can connect to systems such as Shopify, Zendesk and Shopee.
In terms of commercialization, Meta plans to charge enterprises through some plans of WhatsApp Business Premium, and larger enterprises will be charged based on token usage. This is significant for WhatsApp as the platform has previously relied primarily on enterprise messaging services and "click-to-WhatsApp" ads for revenue.