WhatsApp support agent
Diagram of the WhatsApp support agent system: 7 steps
Steps
- WhatsApp message: A customer writes to the company's WhatsApp number.
- Text message?: Only text goes on. Voice notes, images and status updates are not answered by the agent.
- Support agent: Reads the message with the last turns of the conversation in memory and decides what it is about.
- Knowledge base: The answer comes only from the company's own documents, found through Gemini embeddings. Nothing is made up.
- Needs a person?: Refunds, complaints, cancellations and any request for a person stop here.
- Replies on WhatsApp: A routine question gets its answer in the same chat, usually within a minute.
- Escalates by email: The support team gets the conversation by email and takes over.
Routine WhatsApp questions answered from the knowledge base in under a minute; refunds and complaints reach a person every time
The problem
Support teams answer the same WhatsApp questions all day: opening hours, how a return works, where the invoice is, what a plan includes. Each answer is short, but there are 60 of them a day, and they arrive in the same chat as the ones that matter. An urgent complaint or a cancellation sits behind twenty routine questions and gets lost, or gets a copied answer it should never have had. The team is busy, and the customer who needed a person waited longest.
The system
An n8n workflow listens to the company's WhatsApp Business number. Only text messages go on; voice notes, images and delivery receipts are left alone. The support agent reads each message together with the last turns of that conversation, which a short memory keeps per phone number, so "and how long does that take?" still makes sense. The answer is written only from the company's own knowledge base: the documents sit in Pinecone, Gemini embeddings find the matching passages, and the model behind the agent runs through OpenRouter, so it can be swapped without touching the flow. If the passages do not cover the question, the agent says so instead of inventing an answer.
One rule sits above all of this. Refunds, complaints, cancellations, and any message that asks for a person are not answered by the agent at all. The conversation goes to the support team by Gmail with the full history, and the customer is told that a colleague takes over.
What it does now
In the demo, a routine question gets its answer in the same chat within a minute, from the documents the company wrote, and a person only reads those conversations in a daily summary. Anything about money, a complaint or a cancellation is in the support inbox before the customer has put the phone down. The knowledge base is the only thing the team maintains: update the document, and the next answer is right.
Where AI checks and where it decides
| Step | Who decides |
|---|---|
| Whether a message is a routine question the knowledge base covers, and the reply when it is | AI decides |
| Refunds, complaints, cancellations, and every message asking for a person | A person decides |