Egyptian customers message on WhatsApp at any hour: midnight to ask about a price, Friday to ask about branch hours, in the middle of a rush to ask "where is my order?". If the answer waits until morning, many of them have already gone elsewhere.
Many business owners look for a WhatsApp chatbot that answers around the clock. But there are two very different kinds of bot, and you should know the difference before you start.
Type 1: the menu chatbot
The bot offers options: "1 for prices, 2 for opening hours, 3 to track an order, 4 to talk to an agent". Each option leads to a ready reply, another question or a specific team.
Strengths:
- Clear and predictable: it says exactly what you wrote.
- Easy to build and change.
- Great for routing customers to the right team and collecting basics (name, order number, branch).
Weaknesses:
- It does not understand free questions such as "do you have this in a larger size?".
- Customers get bored if the menu is long.
Type 2: the AI agent
An AI agent understands the customer's question written in their own words and replies in natural language. But a good agent does not make things up. It answers only from:
- The knowledge base you prepare: articles, PDF and Word files, pages from your website.
- The customer's own records in the system, such as order status or an appointment.
It understands Arabic and English and replies in the customer's language, so a customer writing in everyday Egyptian Arabic gets a natural, clear answer.
Rules every AI agent needs:
- Never invent prices or promises that are not in the knowledge base.
- Politely decline questions unrelated to your business.
- Hand over to a person when the customer asks, or when the question is outside what it knows.
Which one fits your company?
- Few, repetitive questions and a small team: start with a menu chatbot.
- Many varied questions about products or services: an AI agent answering from the knowledge base.
- Usually best: both. A short menu to route, an AI agent for free questions, and a person taking over when needed.
Hand-over to a person: the most important part
A bot that traps the customer in a loop is worse than no bot. Make sure that:
- Customers can ask for a person at any time with a clear word.
- The conversation goes to the right team by topic: sales, support, complaints.
- The agent sees the whole conversation with the bot and does not repeat questions.
- Outside working hours, the bot tells the customer when a person will reply, and the conversation waits in the inbox.
Approvals: what may the bot do on its own?
Once an AI agent can take actions (book an appointment, build a quote, update details), set a rule for each action:
- Allowed: done straight away, such as answering from the knowledge base.
- Needs approval: prepared by the AI, approved by a person before it reaches the customer, such as a quote.
- Never: not done at all.
You get AI speed without losing control.
How to build a good knowledge base
- Write down the questions your team hears every day, with clear answers.
- Upload your product catalogue or service list and your policies (returns, shipping, hours).
- Split knowledge into categories if you have several brands or departments, and let each agent answer only from its own.
- Review conversations weekly and add answers for anything the bot handled badly.
A quick start list
- An official WhatsApp Business API number connected to the shared inbox.
- A welcome message and a short menu (three or four options).
- A knowledge base with at least your top 30 questions.
- Routing rules for each team.
- Working hours and an out-of-hours message.
- A satisfaction survey when the conversation closes.
Chatbots in Klamna
In Klamna you build chatbot menus for WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Telegram and website chat, all in one team inbox. The AI agents add-on answers only from your knowledge base and the customer's records, hands over to people, and lets you set every action to allowed, needs approval or never. AI runs on your company's own OpenAI account, so you stay in control of the cost.
See AI chatbot for WhatsApp, the WhatsApp Business API in Egypt and our customer service solution.
Try Klamna free and launch your first WhatsApp chatbot menu today.