Meta has unveiled a new artificial intelligence-powered Business Agent designed to help companies manage customer interactions and daily operations 24 hours a day, marking the social media giant’s latest push into the growing enterprise AI market.
Gatekeepers News reports that the announcement was made during the company’s Conversations conference in London.
According to Mark Zuckerberg, the new tool is designed to handle tasks ranging from answering customer enquiries to completing sales. He said the long-term goal is for the AI agent to manage the entire customer journey from the first question to the final sale. More than one million businesses are already using earlier versions of Meta’s business chatbots on WhatsApp and Messenger.
Meta highlighted five key capabilities of the Business Agent. The AI can answer customer questions instantly, communicate through voice notes, recommend products and services, qualify sales leads, and process actions such as bookings, orders, and payments.
It can also transfer complex issues to human staff when necessary while maintaining a company’s preferred tone of communication.
The company said the agent will be available globally across WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram, allowing businesses of all sizes to offer continuous customer support without being online at all times.
Meta is also launching a broader platform that enables firms to build custom AI agents and connect them with external business systems such as Shopify and Zendesk.
