AI sales agent
Job: turn an inbound "how much is a 5kVA inverter?" into a qualified, booked conversation with a person — or a closed sale for simple items — without inventing a price, a discount or a delivery date. Autonomy: act with confirmation. Channels: WhatsApp first, email and web forms second.
What the loop looks like
- Inbound message arrives (WhatsApp webhook, form, email). The agent looks the sender up in the CRM.
- It answers the product question only from the catalogue tool — price, stock, specification. If the catalogue has no answer, it says so and offers a callback.
- It applies the qualification rule you wrote down (see below) by asking at most two questions, one at a time.
- Qualified: it offers demo or site-visit slots from the calendar tool and books with an explicit confirmation. Not qualified: it sends the self-serve link and closes politely.
- It writes a structured note to the CRM: need, budget signal, timeline, next step, transcript link.
- Follow-up is scheduled — inside the 24-hour window as a free message, outside it as an approved template.
The qualification rule must be written before the agent is
A rule an agent can apply is a rule you can write in five lines. An illustrative one for a solar installer: qualified if (a) the enquiry is for a residential or SME system, (b) the customer names a location the company serves, (c) they can say whether they have a quote already, and (d) they want installation within 60 days. The agent asks only for the missing items. Anything about payment terms, financing or negotiated pricing is a handoff — the rule says so explicitly.
Tools
| Tool | Contract | Permission |
|---|---|---|
lookup_contact | phone/email → contact, stage, owner, open quotes | read |
catalogue_search | query → items with price, stock, spec, lead time | read; the only source of prices |
get_slots / book_slot | rep, window → slots; slot_id + confirmation → booking | write after explicit yes |
update_crm | structured note, stage change | write, append-only |
schedule_template | approved template + params + send time | write, capped per contact per week |
handoff | reason, summary, urgency | always allowed |
What it costs on WhatsApp
Replies inside the 24-hour customer service window are free of per-message charges; the model cost of a qualification conversation is in the same range as the booking example on the costs page — a few US cents. The line to watch is re-engagement: a marketing template to a +263 number is priced at the "Rest of Africa" rate, US$0.0225 per delivered message on the rate card effective 1 July 2026, and a utility template (order or appointment update) US$0.0040. Eight hundred leads a month with one marketing follow-up each is US$18; the same volume with a utility follow-up is US$3.20. Meta classifies the template, not you — a "just checking in" message is marketing whatever you call it.
Guardrails that matter here
- Prices come from the tool or not at all. The system prompt contains no prices; the agent quotes what
catalogue_searchreturns and states the date. - No discounts, no credit terms, no delivery promises unless a tool returns them. These are the three things sales agents hallucinate under pressure ("can you do 10% off?").
- One template per contact per week, enforced in code, to protect your WhatsApp quality rating.
- Handoff on any negotiation, on B2B volume enquiries, and whenever the customer asks for a person.
Metrics
Time to first response (target: under a minute, 24/7); qualified-lead rate; demo-booked rate; handoff rate with reasons; template spend per qualified lead; and — the one that tells you whether the agent is trusted — the share of agent-written CRM notes the reps edit.
Where this fits with the rest of your stack
The agent is a front door for the CRM, not a replacement for it. If you run GoHighLevel, HubSpot or Zoho, the notes, stages and follow-ups live there and the agent writes to them through narrow tools; the related implementation company AI Automated Solutions Zimbabwe builds this pattern on GoHighLevel. For the business-case arithmetic — what a qualified lead is worth against what the agent costs — the ROI calculator on businessai.co.zw is built for that question.