The WhatsApp front office that answers, books and escalates
Front Door is an AI front office that lives on WhatsApp, the channel your customers already use for everything else. It answers enquiries using your own price lists, stock and diary, books the appointment, and hands over to a named person the moment judgement is required. It removes the quiet loss every business here lives with: the message that arrives after hours, sits unread until Tuesday, and is answered by a competitor first.
The enquiry does not arrive by email
First contact rarely comes through a web form. It arrives as a WhatsApp message with a photo of a part, a registration book, or a voice note recorded in a car park. That traffic lands on a company phone two people share, and the queue is worked in whatever order the thumb finds it. Front Door gives the same inbox structure, memory and a reply time that does not depend on who is on duty.
It answers from your information, not from guesswork
Front Door is grounded on material you supply and approve: service menus, price lists, opening hours, branches, delivery areas, warranty terms, payment methods. When a customer asks something that material does not cover, it does not improvise a figure or a promise. It says it will confirm, tags the conversation and routes it to the person who knows. That is the design, not a setting we can be talked out of.
Handover is the point, not a failure
The measure of a front office is how cleanly it passes work to people. Front Door escalates on signals you define: a discount request, a complaint, a legal question, a deal above a value you set, or a customer who asks for a human. Your team gets the full thread with a short summary, so the salesperson opens the chat already knowing the vehicle, the budget and what was promised.
Connected to the systems behind the counter
A front office that cannot see the diary is a receptionist with the door locked behind them. Front Door writes into InOne CRM so every enquiry becomes a tracked lead with an owner and a follow-up date, books against the calendars your staff already use, and reads from the system holding the truth: a dealer management system, a stock sheet or a property management system. Quotes and proforma invoices go out inside the same conversation.
Built for the conditions we work in
Front Door assumes the power will go, the fibre will drop and the office closes at five. Conversations are held server-side, so a message received during an outage is still answered and still queued for morning follow-up. It copes with the multilingual, shorthand, voice-note reality of local WhatsApp traffic.
In production at Harris Auto
Harris Auto runs Front Door as its WhatsApp concierge today. Enquiries about vehicles, parts and service arrive on the number customers have always used, are answered whatever the hour, and reach a salesperson with the context already gathered. It is a live commercial deployment, not a pilot, and the reference we walk you through on a briefing call.
What it covers
Answers day and night
Enquiries arrive in the evening, at the weekend and on public holidays, long after the office has closed. The reply goes out at once; the human follow-up is queued for the next working hour.
Qualifies before it books
It asks what your best salesperson asks: what vehicle, what budget, which branch, what date. A diary slot is taken only once the enquiry is real.
Every thread becomes a record
Conversations land in InOne CRM as leads with an owner and a follow-up date. Nothing lives only in a phone that walks out at month end.
Escalation you control
You set which triggers move a chat to a person, and to which person. Complaints, pricing exceptions and anything legal never stay with the agent.
Voice notes and photos handled
A picture of a part or a voice note describing a fault is read, listened to, and summarised in text for your team.
How it works
We read your real enquiries
We start with a week of your actual WhatsApp traffic and ask the front desk what they type over and over. That tells us what to automate first and what must always reach a person.
Connect the number and the systems
We connect your WhatsApp business number, load approved price and service information, and integrate calendars, InOne CRM and the system holding stock, rooms or job cards. Front Door observes and drafts before it may reply to anyone.
Set the rules and guardrails
Together we write the escalation rules, tone, out-of-hours behaviour and the limits of what may be quoted, then test them against your historical conversations. You see how it would have handled last month before it handles this month.
Go live, then tune weekly
It takes the queue, on a portion of traffic if you prefer. We review transcripts with you weekly, fix thin answers and widen its scope as confidence grows. A first deployment typically runs four to six weeks.
Questions buyers ask
Do our customers have to install anything or use a new number?
No. They message the same WhatsApp number on the same app. Nothing changes for the customer, which is why we built on WhatsApp rather than a web chat widget.
Will it pretend to be a person?
Not by our default. It is courteous and natural but identifies itself as an assistant and offers a human at any point. The framing is your decision, but we will not build something designed to deceive a customer.
What happens when it does not know the answer?
It says so and escalates. It operates on verified information and hands over rather than guesses, because an invented price or delivery date costs far more than a short delay.
Can our staff take over a conversation mid-way?
Yes. Your team works from a unified inbox and can jump into any live thread; the agent steps back as soon as a person is typing. Threads can be assigned and reassigned like any work item.
Where does the conversation data live?
In your own environment or a dedicated tenant, with a retention period agreed in writing before go-live. Access is role-based, and you can export or delete history. You always know where the data sits.
We are not a dealership. Does this fit our business?
It suits anyone whose enquiries arrive on WhatsApp and whose revenue depends on answering quickly: lodges, clinics, workshops, schools, brokers and professional firms. The integrations differ; the front office behaves the same.
Book a platform briefing
Fifteen minutes, technical, no slideware. Bring a typical week from your WhatsApp inbox and we will say honestly which parts Front Door should take and which should stay with your people. sales@eigenstatesystems.com or WhatsApp +263 77 636 6999.