WhatsApp Chatbot: A Guide for Businesses (2025)

The rise of chatbots in customer support has been trying to revolutionize the way businesses interact with their customers for years. One platform that has gained significant traction in recent years is WhatsApp, which is the world's most popular messenger and most-installed mobile app throughout all devices and operating systems. Naturally, this success leads to the drive to automatize and scale the use of WhatsApp as a business.

Speaking of chatbots for WhatsApp: with its massive user base of 2 billion and counting, WhatsApp has become an integral part of people's daily lives all over the globe.Ever since META launched its WhatsApp Business API in spring 2022, businesses are leveraging the power ofWhatsApp chatbotsto enhance customer engagement and provide seamless support scalably and in a GDPR-compliant way.

What is a WhatsApp Chatbot?

A WhatsApp chatbot is an - optionally AI-powered - tool that enables businesses to improve customer experience by offering human-like customer service on the WhatsApp platform. Automatically answer customer queries, let users auto-complete surveys, and nurture user attributes on the fly, enriching your CRM data. By integrating a chatbot into WhatsApp, businesses can take customer engagement to a whole new level. Faster bot deflection comes with a secure feeling of being heard and having placed a ticket reliably.

How Does a WhatsApp Chatbot Work?

The working of a WhatsApp chatbot is similar to that of a chatbot on any other messaging channel. When a user sends a message to a company on WhatsApp Business, the chatbot picks up the message, understands the context, and provides an appropriate response. This seamless interaction between the customer and the chatbot enhances the overall customer experience. Businesses can set such logics up using chatarmin.com's "trigger-based" Flow-builder, or make use of AI, training your unique chatbot on the fly, nurturing it through your businesses' website, content and documentation.

See what creating a WhatsApp Chatbot FAQ could look like, using our chatarmin.com Flow-Builder:

Text us to enter this test-WhatsApp Chatbot!

Significance of WhatsApp Chatbots

The significance of WhatsApp chatbots can be gauged from various survey reports and statistics. According to Sprout Social, more than 80% of small businesses have reported that WhatsApp helps them improve customer service and grow their business. Additionally, a YouGov survey revealed that 33% of users prefer WhatsApp because they no longer need to wait for long periods to get their queries answered, as they used to while raising tickets on a business' website. Also, if you happen to wait until you get your questions answered, at least you do not have to stay in a nerve-wracking chatbot bubble, fearing getting kicked out anytime you close the window, browser tab or lose connection to the internet. Simply submit your support ticket once, and the customer support team of the business you are in touch with will get back to you via your favorite communications channel. With WhatsApp becoming increasingly ubiquitous as a standard mode of communication, the relevance of WhatsApp chatbots is bound to grow.

In this video we expain how your customers will always be ready to decide to optin for WhatsApp, or opt out again

Ways to Use WhatsApp Chatbot to Engage Customers

Businesses can leverage WhatsApp chatbots in various ways to engage their customers effectively. Let's explore some of these strategies:

1. Ensuring Omnichannel Support
2. Providing 24/7 Customer Engagement
3. Ensuring Customer Service Automation
4. Initiating Conversational Ordering Process
5. Ensuring Contextual Content for Personalized Selling
6. Automating the Lead Qualification Process
7. Enabling Online Payments
8. Ensuring Post-Sale Support
9. Enabling Feedback Loop
10. Promoting with Loyalty Programs

Benefits of WhatsApp Chatbot

Integrating WhatsApp chatbots into your business marketing strategy offers several benefits:

• 24/7 Automated Customer Support
• Promising Lead Qualification
• Respond Instantly to Users
• Automate Sales
• Personalization

In conclusion, integrating a WhatsApp chatbot into your business strategy can significantly enhance customer engagement and improve overall customer experience. By optionally leveraging the power of AI, businesses can automate customer support, provide personalized recommendations, and streamline sales processes. WhatsApp chatbots offer numerous benefits, including 24/7 support, lead qualification, instant responses, sales automation, and personalization, for more on this topic give our blogpost about: WhatsApp Sales: Use WhatsApp for Sales both B2C and B2B. Embracing this technology can give businesses a competitive edge in today's fast-paced digital landscape.

Source: Chatarmin Youtube

Chatarmin works together with the following tech infrastructures for the practical implementation of these WhatsApp AI chatbot projects:

• Chatbase
• Ultimate.ai
• its own LLM ("Language learning model") based on the technology of OpenAI

In particular, the launch of the world's first ChatGPT-WhatsApp integration has caused a stir. Alternative application possibilities would be quizzes, lead enrichment flows or knowledge databases. We are talking here about service and gamification projects, or digital initiatives such as knowledge databases, tour guides, etc. Think "ChatGPT via WhatsApp".

WhatsApp AI chatbot costs: This is how much your WhatsApp AI costs

The costs for GDPR-compliant WhatsApp are divided into

• Costs for using the Whatsapp Business Platform (80%)
• Costs for using the WhatsApp marketing tool (20%)

The WhatsApp business costs are described in detail here and are billed by META (formerly Facebook) as follows:

• 1,000 free conversations per month
• a conversation is a 24-hour time window from the start of the chat
• the costs vary depending on the customer's country code
• the costs vary depending on the "type of conversation" (utility, service, marketing, authentication)

Typically, 60-90% of your WhatsApp budget will be used to pay the conversational costs of the WhatsApp Business Platform. Only 10-40% of your total WhatsApp AI budget for your business goes to software vendors or business service providers like Chatarmin.

You can request your personal budgeting for your WhatsApp AI chatbot here:

Request the cost calculation of your WhatsApp AI chatbot here!

Calculation examples: Realistic cost estimate of a WhatsApp AI for your company

Calculation example 1: 10,000 bot requests/month, with standard WhatsApp Business Platform costs and Chatarmin "Smarter" package, Austrian WhatsApp cost catalog

For 10,000 support requests per month, you would most likely need 1-3 support employees.

Your cost savings amount to several thousand euros, with a scalable and more efficient operational structure.

Example calculation 2: 100,000 bot requests/month, with standard WhatsApp Business Platform costs and Chatarmin "Smarter" package

For 100,000 monthly support requests, you would probably need 3-8 employees. These will cost you many times more than the Chatarmin WhatsApp AI chatbot solution.

We hope that you can now calculate your WhatsApp AI chatbot budget using our sheet or the tables above.

Feel free to contact us if you would like us to calculate your case together:

Johannes Mansbart

CEO & Co-Founder

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WhatsApp AI chatbot: How long until WhatsApp AI for your company

The following roadmap is realistic for your company from chatbot offer acceptance to the "go-live" of WhatsApp AI:

30-minute tech onboarding with Chatarmin co-founder Armin Daryabegi

• Registration of the WABA in your META Business Suite
• Verification of the phone number on which the WABA is based
• Creation of a Chatarmin account
• Synchronization of the Chatarmin account with the WABA
• Credit card payment of WhatsApp and Chatarmin costs

30-minute product onboarding with the Chatarmin team

• Creation of first flows
• Sending of first test campaigns
• Training of your own language learning model

After that, you are de facto ready to get started with your WhatsApp AI chatbot. It is important to know that the WhatsApp AI for your company will continue to learn and improve over time. We therefore recommend a quick launch and gradual iteration with horizontal and vertical scaling of the project.

BONUS: GDPR compliance of your WhatsApp AI chatbot

It is important for companies to use the WhatsApp Business Platform. This is the only way to ensure you are GDPR compliant to protect your customers' personal data.

Whether you use the WhatsApp Business app or the WhatsApp Business Platform (API), appropriate end-customer consent should be obtained, data should be handled responsibly and easy opt-out options should be offered.

Here you can find our blog post on GDPR compliance of the WhatsApp Business Platform as well as our statement on Chatarmin's GDPR compliance.

Please note that this article provides insights into GDPR compliance on WhatsApp, but does not constitute legal advice. For full information on legal obligations under the GDPR, we recommend consulting the official GDPR website of the European Commission.

Book your personal consultation on your WhatsApp AI chatbot here: