Before an AI answers your WhatsApp, get these eight things ready

Putting an AI on your WhatsApp is rarely held up by the technology. It gets held up by the things you know but never wrote down: which branch closes late on Thursdays, whether you really do birthdays, who deals with the customer who got the wrong order.

An AI agent can only work with what you give it. Here is what to collect first. None of it is technical.

1. The facts it must never guess

Opening hours for each branch, day by day, including anything that runs past midnight. Addresses and Google Maps links. A phone number for each branch. Delivery areas, if you deliver. For bookings: how many tables or people you can take per time slot, and how far ahead people can book.

These look obvious. They are also the first things customers ask, and a wrong closing time sends someone to a locked door.

2. Your menu or price list, with real prices

A spreadsheet is fastest. A PDF or photos work too. Whatever the format, decide who updates it when a price changes. From now on, an old price is something that can be quoted to every customer who asks.

3. The questions you answer every day

Scroll back through your chats. Is there parking? Are you open on Friday? Do you do birthdays? Write down the ten or twenty that keep coming back, and answer each one the way your best employee would.

This is the most useful hour you will spend. On Lazga, the answers you enter here are used word for word, so this is where you set both the facts and the tone.

4. What it must never say

Write the rules you would give a new hire on their first day, in plain sentences:

• Never promise a delivery time.
• Never offer a discount that isn’t on the menu.
• If someone mentions an allergy, make sure a person sees it.

If you wouldn’t let a trainee say it unsupervised, don’t let an agent say it either.

5. Who takes over, by name

“The team” is not an answer. You need a WhatsApp number that someone actually watches, and a name for each shift. Decide what happens to a chat that needs a person at 1 a.m.: does someone answer, or does it wait until morning? Customers forgive a wait that has been explained. They don’t forgive silence.

6. Which number customers will message

If your business already runs on the WhatsApp Business app, you have a choice to make early. Meta now lets a number stay on the app while it is connected to the Business Platform, so you can keep replying from your phone, and the last six months of one-to-one chats can be synced.

There are trade-offs. Group chats aren’t synced, your broadcast lists become read-only, and tools like catalogues and quick replies don’t carry over to the platform side. A new number avoids all of that, but your customers have to learn it. Neither is wrong. Just choose before setup starts, not during it.

7. A short word with your staff

Customers will walk in and say “I sent you a WhatsApp.” Your staff need about ten minutes, not just before service, and three answers:

• “I sent you a WhatsApp.” “Great, let me check.”
• The AI told them something wrong. Apologise once, then tell the manager so the answer gets fixed.
• A special request. It gets flagged to the manager. Floor staff don’t have to watch a screen.

8. An hour of trying to break it

Before a real customer sees it, play the customer. Ask what’s on your list, then ask what isn’t. Order a dish you don’t sell. Complain. Ask for a person. Write the way your customers really write, with the spelling mistakes left in.

Lazga has a screen for this, “Try your assistant.” It answers with your real menu, prices and hours, but nothing is saved, booked, ordered or sent. When it would have booked a table or handed the chat to a person, it shows you what it would have done.

Where to start

If you have these eight things, you are ready for any provider. To start with Lazga, sign up, or message us on WhatsApp with your menu or price list and your Instagram, website or Google Maps link. Lazga builds your account from them and asks only for what it couldn’t work out. Our team connects your WhatsApp number and takes you live.

Next, it is worth deciding what you want to happen on the day it gets something wrong. We wrote about that in What happens when the AI gets it wrong.