AI WhatsApp assistant (pilot)

The AI WhatsApp assistant answers your clients on your business’s own WhatsApp number: hours, address, services and prices, it looks for free times, and it hands the conversation to your team when it can’t help or the client asks for a person. This page explains the WhatsApp AI assistant screen in your panel and its limits.

Invited pilots only

Only businesses invited to the pilot have it. The Citauno team switches it on for your business; it can’t be requested or switched on from the panel.

• It is not in More features, and it is not one of the included modules you switch on yourself (see More features).
• There is no approved price for the assistant. What you see on its screen are usage estimates, not a charge (see What it measures and what it costs).
• It is for appointment businesses. The owner and admins see it under AI assistant in the side menu; a manager doesn’t.

What it needs to answer

The assistant answers only from your business’s own WhatsApp number, never from Citauno’s number. It answers when all of this holds:

1. The pilot is on for your business.
2. Your own WhatsApp number is connected and verified. If not, the Status card on the screen says so and links to the WhatsApp settings.
3. Your Assistant on switch is on.
4. It is not under a safety pause (below).
5. If you chose Only outside opening hours, all your locations are closed right now.

The Status card shows each of these on its own: your switch being on does not mean it is answering.

The assistant controls

In AI assistant, everything is saved with Save settings:

A change applies to the next messages. Changing the pause doesn’t change conversations already paused.

Extra answers and their translation

Manage extra answers opens the list of what your clients ask and your records don’t say: where to park, the wifi, whether pets are welcome.

• Up to 20 answers, with questions of up to 300 characters and answers of up to 1,000.
• Your records win. When an extra answer contradicts your services, hours, locations or policies, the assistant follows those records. An instruction written inside an answer is not obeyed: it is information, not an order.
• Translation. You write in your language and fill in the others in their tabs. If your business has Automatic translation, saving translates the ones you left empty, and the tab has Translate now. What you wrote by hand is never replaced.
• Removing an answer asks for confirmation, and it stops being used at once.

It always introduces itself as a virtual assistant

The first message of each conversation, and again when the client writes after 24 hours, says it is the virtual assistant of your business (with its name, if you gave it one) and that by writing PERSON the client talks to someone on the team. This can’t be removed.

Only outside opening hours

With this option, the assistant answers only when all your active locations are closed at that moment, in the time zone of your business:

• One open location is enough for it not to answer: the team answers.
• Breaks in a location’s hours (lunch, for example) count as closed: during them the assistant answers.
• If a day has no clear hours, or there are no active locations, it doesn’t answer that day. The screen warns you and takes you to check the hours.
• A message that arrived while you were open is not answered later, at closing: it stays in Messages for your team.

Online booking on your page doesn’t change with this option.

Voice notes

Voice notes up to 2 minutes are transcribed and answered like a written message. The assistant reads what the client said and replies as it would to a text, in the client’s language.

• A voice note longer than 2 minutes, a forwarded audio file over 1 MB, or a note it can’t make out, gets a line asking the client to write it or send PERSON to talk to your team.
• A spoken “yes” in a voice note doesn’t confirm a booking, a move or a cancellation: the client has to tap Confirm.
• Your team sees the transcript in Messages, under the player, which is labelled Voice note. The audio is kept as before.
• Each transcription counts toward the estimated AI cost (see What it measures and what it costs).

When it hands the conversation to the team

The assistant hands the conversation to your team when the client asks for a person, when it doesn’t know the answer, on a complaint or a sensitive question. That conversation is paused for the Pause after handing over time, and you are notified. When someone on the team answers by hand, in Messages or in the WhatsApp Business app, that conversation is paused too: your team always wins.

Resume one conversation

In Messages, the conversation shows the assistant’s state: whether it is paused, until when and why. Resume the assistant here makes it answer the next message of that conversation again: it doesn’t close the conversation, sends nothing to the client and doesn’t change who it is assigned to. Closing the conversation resumes it too.

Resuming one conversation does not lift a safety pause and doesn’t turn your switch on: when the assistant is stopped for the whole business, the conversation says so and stays unanswered.

The quality of your number

Meta rates the quality of your number (green, yellow or red) by how clients receive your messages.

• Every morning, Citauno checks the quality of your number. With yellow or red quality, the assistant goes under a safety pause.
• In Number quality you see the last reading, with its time, and Check the quality now, which asks Meta in the background (once every 15 minutes). Reload the page in a few minutes to see the result.
• When the check could not read the quality, the screen says why in words (Meta didn’t answer, connection details are missing…) and the earlier reading doesn’t count. A green reading older than 26 hours doesn’t count either.

Resume the whole business after a safety pause

Citauno pauses the assistant for all your clients when Meta reports a problem with your number (its quality dropped, the number or the account is restricted, or Meta couldn’t charge) or when a quality check reads it yellow or red. The screen says the reason, since when, and what to do in WhatsApp Manager.

• Your switch doesn’t resume it. Turning it off and on doesn’t lift the pause.
• The owner resumes it, with a current green reading of the number (ask for a check and wait for it to come back green) and by ticking I have fixed the number’s problem with Meta. An admin can’t; the Citauno team can also resume it after reviewing it.
• While it is paused, you can’t disconnect the number. It is resumed first.
• Resuming the whole business doesn’t lift the pauses of single conversations: those are resumed in Messages.

The test chat

At the end of the screen, Test the assistant lets you write as a client would and see what it would answer, with the data you have saved (save before testing).

• It is only a test: it sends nothing over WhatsApp and nobody gets a message.
• Nor does it touch your calendar: it creates, moves or cancels no appointments, and uses no real client’s identity. It can only look for free times, build the link to your booking page and say when it would hand the conversation to the team.
• It works while the assistant is off, outside its hours or under a safety pause, precisely because it sends nothing.
• Don’t paste your clients’ personal details.
• Each message is up to 1,000 characters. The test conversation is not saved: it expires after 30 minutes and is gone when you leave the page.
• It has limits, because each answer uses the AI provider and costs Citauno: 6 per minute and 20 per day per business, and 100 per hour across all Citauno businesses. The day and the hour are counted in UTC: the daily limit resets at 00:00 UTC, which is not midnight at your business (it is 21:00 in Paraguay). A failed attempt counts too.

What it measures and what it costs

The This month’s assistant card shows the current month in the time zone of your business, from its first to its last day, with the zone written out: conversations, bookings made, moved, cancelled and handed to the team.

It also shows the AI cost of the answers and, apart, that of your test chat. That cost is an estimate by Citauno of what the AI provider charges Citauno, in US dollars, from the price of tokens (the pieces of text the AI processes) and, for voice notes, the length of the audio:

• It is not a bill, nor something charged to you.
• No price yet: there is no approved price for the assistant, and that number is not its price or a preview of one.
• It does not include the WhatsApp (Meta) charges of your number.
• When a call has no known price, the card warns that the real cost is higher than shown.

Common errors

What you have now

• You know the assistant is an invitation-only pilot with no approved price.
• You know what your switch controls and what it doesn’t, and how to resume one conversation or the whole business.
• You know the test chat sends nothing over WhatsApp and doesn’t touch your appointments, and what its limits are.

Next step

See how your clients’ messages reach Messages in WhatsApp notifications and credits.