Over the past year, we noticed most customer questions for small businesses were coming in on WhatsApp, not email or tickets. Auto-replies helped briefly but failed with real conversations. We ended up building an AI-based approach on top of the WhatsApp Business API.
One thing we learned quickly is that pure automation breaks trust fast. The real win was letting AI handle repetitive questions while cleanly handing off to a human when context got messy. Curious how others here decide where to draw that line.