Create a basic AI chatbot on WhatsApp

A basic AI chatbot on WhatsApp uses your trained AI agent to answer customer questions automatically. The bot asks the user for their query, passes it to the AI agent (trained on your documents and FAQs), and sends back the answer — with a fallback to a human agent if the AI cannot respond.

Before you start

Create and train your AI agent first. See the Create an AI Agent and Train an AI Agent guides to set up the knowledge base your bot will use.

Build the AI chatbot flow

Open Bot Builder and create a new bot flow.

Set the trigger (e.g., a keyword trigger such as "help" or "hi", or a new message trigger).

Add an Ask a Question block: "What is your query?" Save the response to a variable.

Add a new step and select AI Integration. Go to your AI Dashboard, copy the authentication token, and paste it into the bot builder.

Select the AI agent you want to use (e.g., Support Agent). Choose which knowledge files to use, or leave empty to use all files.

(Optional) Add a system prompt to define how the AI should respond, including a fallback reply for queries the AI cannot answer.

Map the AI's answer to a Send Message block. If no answer is returned, configure a fallback — either a default message or a human agent handoff.

Add an AI Smart Wait block (e.g., 5 minutes) to wait for follow-up messages from the user. If the user replies, pass the new query back to the AI.

Set up an exit keyword (e.g., "bye") that ends the session with a polite closing message.

Save and enable the flow. Test it by sending your trigger keyword to the WhatsApp number.

Bot flow template available

A ready-made bot flow template for this use case is available. In the Bot Builder, go to Templates and look for the AI chatbot template, or clone it directly using the flow template link from the video description.

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Want the bigger picture? See the AI feature guide for use cases and strategy.

Create a basic AI chatbot on WhatsApp

Build the AI chatbot flow

Create an AI agent

Train an AI agent on your data

Test an AI agent

AI bots: greetings, data answers, and intent routing