An AI agent is only as good as what you teach it. The good news: what it needs to learn is already in your business, just scattered between your receptionist’s head, your best salesperson’s chat and a PDF nobody has updated. This guide is the list of what to gather. It takes an afternoon and saves weeks.
1. Your frequent questions, with the real answers
Not the ones on the website. The ones your team actually answers every day on WhatsApp. The fastest way to extract them:
- Ask the person who handles WhatsApp to export or review their last 200 conversations.
- Note every distinct question and how they answered it. Do not edit the tone: that is how your customers expect to be spoken to.
- Mark the ones that repeat more than 5 times. Those are what the agent will resolve from day one.
A good agent starts with 30 to 60 well-answered questions. You do not need 300.
2. The handoff rule: when a person steps in
It is the most important decision and the one most often left for last. Write, as a list, the situations where the agent must pass the conversation to someone on your team. Examples that appear in almost every business:
- The customer asks for a person (always honored, no pushback).
- There is a complaint, a claim or an angry tone.
- Something outside policy is requested: an unpublished discount, a return past the window, an exception.
- It is a medical, legal, tax or safety question (depending on your field).
- The amount is above a certain figure.
- The agent does not know the answer with confidence.
Then define who it goes to and how: a team WhatsApp number? an email? a card in the CRM? And what it tells the customer meanwhile: “I’ve let Mariana know, she’ll write to you within the hour.”
3. What the agent may decide on its own
The mirror of the previous list. Write what the agent may do without asking:
- Book and reschedule within available hours.
- Quote from the current price list, including shipping by city.
- Apply published promotions (and no others).
- Send the payment link.
- Confirm an order’s status.
The clearer this list, the more useful the agent and the fewer surprises.
4. Your data, in whatever format it is in
The agent needs access to the information it works with. It does not have to be perfect; it has to exist:
- Calendar: Google Calendar, your booking system or a shared calendar. If today it is a notebook, it gets digitized during implementation.
- Catalog and prices: a spreadsheet with name, price, variants and stock is enough to start. If you have an online store, it connects directly.
- Customers: your CRM or the sheet where you keep names and phones.
- Policies: shipping, returns, cancellations, deposits. One paragraph each.
The only thing that truly matters: one source of truth per piece of data. If the price lives in three different places, the agent will answer with whichever it finds first.
5. The tone
Gather 10 conversations from your best salesperson or the person who gives the best service. The agent learns from them how you greet, how you sign off, whether you use emojis, how you say no. An agent with your tone feels like part of the business; a generic one feels like a call center.
6. The access
You will need to grant access (or create new accounts in your name) to:
- WhatsApp Business (the API, not the app; it is set up during implementation).
- Your calendar or booking system.
- Your CRM or customer sheet.
- Your payment gateway, if the agent will collect.
Golden rule: the accounts are yours. If someone asks that WhatsApp or hosting be in the agency’s name, no.
7. How you will measure whether it works
Before switching the agent on, decide the two or three numbers you will review every week:
- How many conversations it resolved alone and how many it handed to a person.
- How many appointments it booked or sales it closed.
- How long it took to answer (it should be seconds).
- Which questions it could not answer (they are your homework for next week).
That last point is what makes the agent improve: every week, the conversations it did not resolve are reviewed and become new rules or answers. In a month it resolves more than in the first week.
The full list, to print
- 30 to 60 frequent questions with real answers.
- The list of when it hands off, to whom and how.
- The list of what it may decide alone.
- Calendar, catalog, customers and policies, in whatever format.
- 10 example conversations in your tone.
- Access in your name.
- The 3 numbers you will review every week.
With this in hand, a WhatsApp agent reaches production in 14 days. If you would rather we help you gather it, that is part of what we do in the free diagnosis: you leave with your handoff list and your “one” to start with.