WHATSAPP SALES AI · ZIMBABWE
Your WhatsApp line, answered.
Augustus replies to enquiries in seconds, answers product questions, qualifies the serious buyers and hands them to your team with the conversation already summarised.
14-day free trial. No card. Your number, your data.
WHATSAPP THREAD
SchematicNew enquiry · +263 77 ••• 4412
Tuesday 21:04 · outside working hours
- Customer21:04Good evening, do you have the 2.5 x 1.8m double bed in stock and how much
- Augustus21:04Good evening. Yes — four in stock at the Msasa branch. $410 cash, or $445 over three months on layby. Delivery inside Harare is $25. Would you like me to hold one for you?
- Customer21:06Yes please hold one. Can I pay by EcoCash tonight
- Augustus21:06Yes. I have sent a Paynow link that takes EcoCash, OneMoney or InnBucks. It holds the unit for 24 hours. Someone from the branch will confirm delivery with you before nine tomorrow.
- Handed to sales21:07Qualified: in stock, price accepted, payment link sent. Hold 1 unit at Msasa. Follow up before 09:00.
Illustrative conversation. Numbers are masked in the interface as well as here.
THE PROBLEM
The enquiry that waits until morning is the enquiry you lost.
Your busiest hour is one nobody is working
Enquiries arrive between eight and ten at night, when people are at home with their phones and a decision to make. Your salespeople see them at ten the next morning.
The same six questions, all day
Price, availability, delivery, location, payment methods, warranty. Trained salespeople spend their day typing the same six answers instead of selling.
You cannot tell a buyer from a browser
Two hundred unread messages and no way to know which three of them were going to spend money today. So they all get treated the same, which means slowly.
HOW IT WORKS
Three steps.
01
Train it on what you sell
We train Augustus on your products, prices and policies.
02
Connect your number
It connects to your WhatsApp Business number.
03
Let it answer
It answers, qualifies, and hands over anything it should not handle alone.
WHAT IS IN IT
What it does, and what it is not allowed to do.
WhatsApp business automation in Zimbabwe is not a chat widget on a website. It is the channel your customers already use to ask for a price, and the second list below matters as much as the first.
Answering
- Price and availability
- Read live from your stock system where you have one, or from a price list you upload. It quotes the number that is true now, not the one on last month’s sheet.
- Delivery, collection and location
- Areas, charges, lead times, branch addresses and opening hours, including the public holiday you forgot to tell anyone about.
- Payment methods
- What you accept, how a layby works, what a deposit holds, and a payment link when the customer is ready.
- Language
- English, Shona and Ndebele, including a customer who switches mid-sentence — which in this market is most of them.
Qualifying and handing over
- Qualification questions
- Quantity, timeframe, budget and delivery area, asked the way a good salesperson asks them rather than as a form.
- Handover summary
- The salesperson receives what was asked, what was answered, what was agreed and one recommended next step. Not a screenshot at midnight.
- Escalation triggers
- It hands over the moment a customer asks for a discount, disputes a price, complains, mentions a lawyer, or asks anything that sounds medical or legal.
- Working hours
- You choose whether Augustus takes the line all the time or only outside office hours. Most clients start with the second and move to the first.
Control
- Approved answers
- It answers from a library you approve. Adding an answer takes a minute and takes effect immediately.
- It does not guess
- When it does not have something, it says so and fetches a person. A confident wrong answer costs more than a slow right one.
- No discounting, ever
- Negotiating is off by default and stays off unless you switch it on with limits. Augustus will not give away your margin to close a conversation.
- Kill switch
- One switch turns Augustus off and routes every conversation to a person inside a minute. No deployment, no phone call to us.
First reply went from fourteen hours to under two minutes.
Median first response, down from 14 hours, on the same WhatsApp number they already used.
The retailer is not named and there is no quote here, because written permission has not been given yet. The figures are theirs and are unchanged. We would rather show you one real number without a logo than a wall of logos with no numbers.
Retail
A furniture retailer, 3 branches
- Problem
- WhatsApp enquiries went unanswered overnight and at weekends.
- Built
- Augustus AI on their existing WhatsApp Business number.
- Result
- First response time went from 14 hours to under 2 minutes.
THE SCREENS
What your team sees in the morning.
These are schematics, not photographs: the same columns and field labels as the live system, with customer numbers masked exactly as the interface masks them. Real captures replace them as clients give permission to publish their conversations.
OVERNIGHT QUEUE
SchematicWednesday 07:30 · 41 conversations
5 of 41 shown
| Number | Asked about | Outcome | Value | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| +263 77 ••• 4412 | Double bed 2.5 × 1.8 m | In stock · price accepted | $410 | Hold unit · link sent |
| +263 71 ••• 0938 | Three-piece lounge suite | Budget below list | — | Answered · layby terms sent |
| +263 78 ••• 2216 | Delivery to Bindura | Outside delivery area | — | Answered · collection offered |
| +263 77 ••• 8801 | Wardrobe · availability | Out of stock | — | Answered · notify when in |
| +263 73 ••• 5527 | 12 office desks | Qualified · asked for a discount | $3,888 | Escalated to sales |
| 5 of 41 shown | 2 handed to sales | $4,298 | 3 closed by Augustus |
Illustrative. Thirty-five of the forty-one were closed without a person.
HANDOVER SUMMARY
SchematicBulk order · +263 73 ••• 5527
Escalated 21:41
- Reason for handover
- Customer asked for a discount
- Asked about
- 12 office desks, 1.4 m, oak finish
- Quantity confirmed
- 12 units
- Budget indicated
- Under $300 per desk
- List price
- $324 per desk · $3,888 for twelve
- Delivery
- Harare CBD · ground floor · weekday morning
- Payment
- Company transfer · needs an invoice with a TIN
- What Augustus did not do
- Offer a discount. Discounting is not in its approved answers.
- Recommended next step
- Call before 09:00 with a quantity price a manager has already approved.
- Transcript
- 14 messages · attached in full
Illustrative.
APPROVED SOURCES
SchematicWhat Augustus is allowed to say
Last synced 06:00
| Source | Contents | Refreshed | If it is missing |
|---|---|---|---|
| CheckERP stock and prices | 1,284 items · live | Every 15 minutes | Says it will check · hands over |
| Price list upload | 1,284 lines · Excel | On upload | Uses CheckERP if newer |
| Policies | 9 documents · delivery, layby, warranty | On publish | Says it does not know · hands over |
| Branches and hours | 3 branches | On edit | Hands over |
| 4 sources | 1,284 items · 9 documents | Never guesses |
Illustrative. Augustus answers only from sources you have approved.
WHAT IT CONNECTS TO
It plugs into the number your customers already message.
You do not move your customers to a new number, a new app or a new habit. Augustus arrives on the line they have been messaging for years.
Your existing number, your verified profile
- WhatsApp Business API
- We move your existing number onto the official API with your business profile intact. Your chat history stays with you and your customers notice nothing except a faster reply.
- Template and broadcast messages
- Sent inside Meta’s rules, at the right template category, so your number does not get rate-limited or restricted for spam.
- Several numbers and branches
- One Augustus across a group, or a separate personality, price list and escalation route per branch.
- Handover to a person
- A staff member takes over the same thread from their phone. The customer is not asked to start again somewhere else.
Taking the payment
The rails Zimbabwean customers actually use
- Paynow
- One link that accepts EcoCash, OneMoney, InnBucks, ZIPIT and local card, valid for a fixed window and tied to the unit it is holding.
- Pending payments handled honestly
- EcoCash confirms out of band, sometimes minutes later. Augustus keeps the conversation open until the payment actually resolves instead of telling a customer it is done when it is not.
- Deposits and layby
- Part payments recorded against the order, with the balance and the next date stated in the thread so nobody argues about it later.
Your product and price data
It answers from your system, not from a copy of it
- CheckERP and ASOFT ERP
- Live stock, prices and term dates. The figure a customer is quoted at nine at night is the figure your stores manager sees at nine in the morning.
- Excel, CSV and Google Sheets
- The fastest way to start. Upload a price list, and update it by uploading a new one or editing the sheet.
- Other stock systems and tills
- By API where one exists, or by a scheduled file where it does not. We tell you which of the two you are getting before you buy.
Where the leads go
Into whatever your team already opens
- WhatsApp to a salesperson
- The handover summary arrives on the phone they are already holding, which is why it gets read.
- Email and Google Sheets
- A daily digest and a running sheet, for the manager who wants to see the week rather than the moment.
- Webhook to your CRM
- A signed webhook with the conversation, the qualification and the value, so leads land in the system your team is measured on.
- The Silverconne portal
- Every conversation, transcript and outcome in one place, exportable at any time.
Other channels, same brain
Start with WhatsApp because that is where the money is
- Website chat
- The same approved answers on your site, with the conversation continuing on WhatsApp if the visitor prefers.
- Facebook and Instagram
- Messenger and direct messages answered from the same source, so a customer never gets two different prices from two of your pages.
- SMS fallback
- For a customer with no data. Shorter answers, same rules, same handover.
WhatsApp Business API access is granted by Meta, not by us. We handle the application and the number migration, but the approval and the per-message fees are Meta’s — and those fees appear on your invoice at cost, as their own line.
PRICING
What Augustus AI costs.
Priced on conversations, not on messages, because a customer who asks nine questions is still one customer. The trial takes no card, so you can settle the question on your own enquiries instead of on our claims.
FROM
$60/monthCovers one WhatsApp number and the first 500 conversations a month. Meta’s per-message fees are passed through at cost.
- 14-day free trial with no card
- Setup on your existing WhatsApp Business number
- Approved-answer library, escalation rules and the kill switch
- Transcript export at any time
14-day free trial. No card. Your number, your data.
What moves the number
- Conversations per month
- Banded. A conversation is one customer over 24 hours, however many messages that takes. Most retailers with one branch sit in the first band.
- WhatsApp numbers
- One number is included. A group running a separate line and price list per branch adds per number.
- Catalogue size
- A hundred products is straightforward. Fourteen thousand with variants, sizes and per-branch pricing takes longer to get right.
- Live system integration
- Reading stock out of CheckERP is included. Reading it out of a system we did not build is scoped once, then it is done.
- Languages
- English is standard. Shona and Ndebele are included; anything beyond that is quoted, because it needs review by someone who speaks it.
Every price on this page is also on the pricing page, with the services and workshops alongside it.
IMPLEMENTATION
Live in five working days.
Augustus is software, not a project. Most of the week is spent deciding what it is allowed to say, which is a conversation worth having anyway.
DAY 1
Connect
Your WhatsApp Business number is verified onto the API. Your profile, your history and your customers stay exactly where they are.
DAY 2
Train
We load your catalogue, price list, delivery terms, layby rules, warranty and branch details, and connect to your stock system if you have one.
DAY 3
Set the limits
You decide what Augustus answers alone, what it escalates and what it must never say. Discounting is off unless you turn it on.
DAY 4
Shadow
It drafts every reply and a person approves each one. You see exactly how it would have answered before a single customer does.
DAY 5
Go live
It takes the line outside working hours first. Once you have read a week of transcripts and stopped wincing, it takes the line all the time.
What we need from you
- Your WhatsApp Business number, and admin access to the Meta Business account it sits on.
- A current price list. Excel is fine.
- Your delivery, layby, warranty and returns terms in writing — even if writing them down is the first time.
- One person who can approve what Augustus is allowed to say.
- A salesperson to receive escalations, and a phone to receive them on.
What training is included
- One hour with whoever answers escalations, on reading a handover summary and taking over a thread.
- One hour with a manager on the approved-answer library, the working-hours rules and the kill switch.
- A review of every escalated conversation with us, weekly, for the first month.
- A named contact on WhatsApp.
The trial runs fourteen days and takes no card, so the decision is made on your own conversations rather than on our description of them.
QUESTIONS
The eight things people want settled before they hand over the line.
Will customers know they are talking to a machine?
Yes. Augustus says what it is at the start of a conversation, and it does not pretend to be a member of staff. Hiding it does not survive contact with a customer who asks a second question, and being caught pretending costs more trust than the disclosure ever does.
What happens when it does not know the answer?
It says so and fetches a person. It never fills a gap with a plausible number. That is the single most important behaviour in the product, and it is why the approved-answer library exists rather than a general-purpose model answering freely about your prices.
Can it agree a discount or change a price?
Not unless you switch that on, and even then only inside limits you set. By default a discount request is an escalation trigger: the conversation goes to a person with the quantity, the budget and the list price already established.
Where is our data stored, and who can read the conversations?
Conversations are stored against your account and are readable by the people you give access to, plus whichever of our staff you authorise for support. Access is enforced in the database, not in the screens. Transcripts export at any time and delete on request. The hosting region is stated in writing before you sign.
Do we need a new WhatsApp number?
No. We migrate the number you already advertise onto the WhatsApp Business API, keeping your profile and your history. Starting a new number would mean starting your customer list again, which defeats the point.
Will Meta restrict or block our number?
Not if the rules are followed, and following them is part of what you are paying for. Messages go out in the correct template category, marketing is separated from service replies, and opt-outs are honoured immediately. Numbers get restricted for broadcasting to people who did not ask, not for answering people who did.
Can we start small?
Yes. Most clients start with one module or one site and add from there.
What happens if we stop working with you?
You keep your data and your licences per the contract. No hostage-taking.
Something not answered here? Ask us directly.
NEXT STEP
Point it at your own WhatsApp line for two weeks.
Fourteen days on your number, your price list and your customers. Read the transcripts and decide from those.
14-day free trial. No card. Your number, your data.