Meta launches Business Agent AI for WhatsApp customer service

Meta introduced its Business Agent AI platform at the Conversations conference in London, enabling businesses to handle customer queries, qualify sales leads, manage bookings and process transactions directly within messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Instagram. The system is designed to move Meta’s revenue focus from advertising toward the transactional stage of commerce, giving small and large firms automated, round‑the‑clock support.

In Mexico, AI automation agency Proxxa built a production‑grade WhatsApp assistant using Claude and n8n, connecting directly to Meta’s WhatsApp Cloud API without a third‑party provider. The assistant offers features including natural‑language conversation, memory of past interactions, calendar booking, image‑based product queries, voice‑note transcription, multi‑language replies and in‑chat payments. The deployment shows how the new AI agent technology can be applied by small‑ and medium‑size businesses to capture leads and reduce lost sales.

Both developments illustrate the growing competition among major tech firms—Meta, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and OpenAI—to embed autonomous AI agents in everyday customer‑service workflows.