The Story of TBit: A WhatsApp Bot? Or Something More Than Just a Chatbot

The Story of TBit

The Story of TBit is an inspiring odyssey of resilience and adaptation. TBit was born from the process of pivoting an earlier project, initially conceived as a social network. Its founders, Freddy and Clovis, were inspired by the emergence of advanced language models like ChatGPT and noticed a critical market need: the loneliness and secret overload of the entrepreneur, who often lacks time and resources to efficiently manage all of their sales interactions, customer service, projects, workflow, systems, channels, their website, their account and clicks.

Currently, TBit offers an AI solution in the form of a virtual salesperson designed for entrepreneurs, small and medium teams. This AI agent primarily integrates with conversational channels such as WhatsApp and Instagram, where it acts as a sales team member capable of handling inquiries, managing inventory, offering products and guiding the customer to the point of purchase. Its main advantage lies in being a conversational solution, easy to train without technical knowledge, which sets it apart from traditional flow-based chatbots.

TBit is an AI-powered business assistant that originated in Latin America due to the difficulties of being an entrepreneur in the region. Unlike a conventional chatbot, TBit is designed to replicate the user’s communication and selling style, operating autonomously during periods of inactivity. This unique capability has enabled many entrepreneurs to manage their businesses more efficiently and effectively.

The story of TBit is not only a testament to technological innovation but also to how artificial intelligence can be used to solve real-world problems. Instead of outsourcing the technology, Freddy and Clovis used AI as an accelerator in their own development to transform their original idea into a business tool focused on solving the central problem for entrepreneurs. This approach has allowed TBit to position itself as a reliable and effective solution in the market.

What is a bot for WhatsApp?

A WhatsApp bot is a software that automates communication with your customers:

• Interacts in real time with users through the messaging platform.
• Can manage customer communications without direct human intervention.
• Responds to questions and performs tasks.
• Can be powered by artificial intelligence or predefined rules.
• Allows managing interactions in different ways, optimizing the user experience.

Through WhatsApp, bots enable automating communication, which not only improves operational efficiency but also offers a smoother and more responsive customer experience.

This is why many companies have begun adopting WhatsApp chatbots, leveraging the WhatsApp Business API to integrate these automated solutions into their workflows.

Benefits of using a WhatsApp bot in your business

Implementing a WhatsApp chatbot in your business can radically transform how you handle customer service. One of the most notable benefits is the ability to offer instant answers to frequently asked questions, which significantly improves customer service. Additionally, a bot enables companies to respond to customers 24/7, improving availability and responsiveness.

Another crucial advantage of chatbots is their ability to:

• Speed up response times, meeting customers’ expectations for immediate answers.
• Improve customer satisfaction.
• Maintain efficiency in customer service.
• Provide real-time order status information, which is extremely useful for e-commerce businesses.

Additionally, chatbots facilitate automation of tasks such as following up with customers and sending promotions. This allows businesses to run marketing campaigns and send promotions to customers efficiently and effectively.

One of the main advantages of using an AI-powered chatbot in WhatsApp is its ability to scale and handle multiple conversations simultaneously, something impossible for a human team.

In short, chatbots automate processes necessary to scale operations in a business, offering consistent and scalable customer service. This not only saves time but also improves operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Common use cases for WhatsApp bots

WhatsApp bots are extremely versatile and can be used in a variety of scenarios, including:

• Managing marketing campaigns, allowing companies to interact with their customers automatically.
• Executing promotions.
• Answering questions about products, helping to steer customer interest.

In terms of customer service, bots can greet customers, handle inquiries and provide immediate support. Companies like Crisp use bots to offer customer support and manage administrative tasks from WhatsApp.

In short, using bots in marketing and customer service improves the direct connection between businesses and customers, optimizing attention and efficiency.

What do TBit’s virtual agents do

TBit’s virtual agents are true business assistants, capable of performing a wide range of tasks:

• From the initial greeting to handling complex inquiries.
• Interact with customers in a natural and efficient way.
• Use message templates to start conversations.
• Provide specific and comprehensible responses to customers’ inquiries about services and prices.

TBit’s virtual agents offer the following functionalities:

• Manage customer inquiries.
• Take orders.
• Resolve problems, providing continuous support.
• Share product information, including photos and prices.
• Enable automated campaigns to send mass messages according to the user’s commercial strategy.
• Integrate with various e-commerce platforms like Shopify and Jumpseller, adding an extra layer of functionality.

TBit also allows lead scoring and collecting valuable information about customers, incorporating a 'humans in the loop' approach to ensure proper supervision. This combination of automation and human oversight ensures customers receive the best possible service while businesses operate more efficiently.

Lead tracking

Lead tracking is one of the most valuable features of TBit’s bots. Unlike human agents, who may be limited by time and resources, bots can:

• Automatically follow up with customers after they send a message.
• Ensure no lead is lost.
• Enable businesses to convert leads into customers by sending valuable content in automated flows.

Chatbots can collect user information and efficiently qualify leads during the conversation. This automation and continuous tracking capability significantly improves customer service quality and increases conversion rates, providing added value that would be hard to match with a human team.

Initial bot setup

Setting up a WhatsApp chatbot can seem daunting, but with the right tools, it’s a fairly straightforward process. To begin, you need at minimum:

1. A WhatsApp Business account.
2. A Facebook Business Manager.

If you use TBit, you can configure all this easily using the Facebook for Business login. In our article, we explain in detail how the different elements of Facebook for Business work and how they differ from personal accounts: WhatsApp and Facebook for business versus personal accounts.

To connect a TBit line to WhatsApp, you can follow this step-by-step tutorial: TBit connection tutorial to WhatsApp.

Once you have these elements configured, simply create your TBit account and start training the bot to adapt to your business’s specific needs.

Bot customization and training

Customization and training of a bot are crucial to ensure it perfectly fits the needs of your business. It offers:

• Ongoing training; you need to update it about what is new in your business, train it as you would train a person
• Tone adjustment to reflect the brand’s voice
• Adaptation of automation processes to various business needs, from marketing to order management

Training the TBit virtual salesperson is as simple as telling a friend how to sell a product or service. A well-trained and customized bot not only improves user interaction but also increases customer satisfaction, providing precise and relevant responses, becoming an excellent source of information.

Advanced functionalities of WhatsApp bots

WhatsApp bots have evolved through different layers of automation that define the level of interaction possible between a company and its customers.

Automatic responses

At the most basic level are automatic responses, available even from the WhatsApp Business app itself. These allow configuring preset messages to respond outside business hours or on the first interaction with the customer, speeding up initial attention. They can also request basic user information — such as name or type of inquiry — to guide the attention more quickly and orderly.

Flow or rule-based chatbots

The next level of automation consists of flow- or rule-based chatbots. These bots guide the user through a series of predefined options, using buttons or keywords.

For example, if the user says they are looking for “shoes” instead of “t-shirts,” the flow can adapt to ask for size or color as appropriate. While these systems allow some customization and use of conditionals, their interaction remains limited: they do not understand natural language or interpret variations in answers.

AI-powered virtual assistants

The most advanced are AI-powered virtual assistants. These not only respond to user text but can interpret natural language, and even process audio or images depending on the technology used.

Thanks to natural language processing (NLP), this type of agent understands the intent behind messages and can adapt to each conversation, offering contextualized and more human-like responses.

The TBit AI, for example, learns from the history and style of communication of each business, making the assistant reflect its tone, personality, and specific goals. This makes conversations more fluid, friendly, and effective.

CRM and other systems integration

WhatsApp bots can also integrate with external systems, such as CRM platforms, to manage customer data and automate processes. These integrations allow logging interactions, updating databases, or generating automatic responses based on the customer’s history.

For example, by combining the WhatsApp Business API with tools like Zendesk or HubSpot, it’s possible to offer immediate support and maintain traceability across all communication channels.

Best practices for implementing bots on WhatsApp

To ensure your WhatsApp chatbot is effective, it’s crucial to follow some best practices. Setting clear objectives is fundamental to designing effective conversation flows for the chatbot. Also, regularly updating and training the bot is crucial to keep the information it provides relevant.

Customizing the welcome message helps create a good first impression and builds trust with users. Maintaining a tone aligned with the brand identity is equally important for chatbot interaction. Offering menus and clear options facilitates user navigation in the chatbot, improving the overall experience.

Allowing the option to speak with a human increases user trust in the chatbot. This combination of automation and a human touch ensures customers can always get the help they need, increasing satisfaction and loyalty.

Monitoring and performance analysis

Monitoring and performance analysis are essential to ensure your bot is functioning optimally. Key metrics are essential to evaluate your bot’s performance and make necessary adjustments. It’s crucial to measure and analyze metrics such as the number of conversations started and questions answered successfully.

Chatbot platforms allow tracking performance in customer service, facilitating reports and improvements. Monitoring the rate of transfer to a human agent helps identify improvement points in the user experience, ensuring interactions are always effective and satisfactory.

Collaboration between bots and human agents

Collaboration between bots and human agents is crucial to delivering complete and satisfying customer service. Bots and humans complement each other, where bots handle routine inquiries while humans bring empathy and problem resolution. This synergy allows human agents to focus on more complex issues requiring a personal touch.

The chatbot can assign conversations to team members, improving collaboration and the customer experience. The combination of automated bots and human intervention creates a more complete and satisfying user experience in customer service.

Summary

In summary, WhatsApp chatbots like TBit offer a powerful and effective solution to improve customer service and optimize business operations. From automating responses to CRM integration and the use of artificial intelligence, these bots are designed to deliver a superior user experience. The story of TBit shows how innovation and adaptability can transform an idea into an invaluable tool for entrepreneurs.

Implementing a WhatsApp chatbot not only improves operational efficiency but also frees up time and resources for entrepreneurs to focus on what really matters: growing their business. With the right best practices and ongoing supervision, a chatbot can become a true ally in business success. It’s time to take the next step and transform your business with the help of a WhatsApp chatbot!