Omnichat, a Meta WhatsApp business solution provider, has rolled out its new Omni AI Agent Studio, a platform designed to help businesses build custom AI agents for WhatsApp that can handle everything from customer service to marketing and commerce in a conversational setting.
The platform builds upon Omnichat’s AI agents, including AI Customer Service Agent, AI Marketing Campaign Agent and AI Shopping Agent, enabling the seamless integration of these custom-built agents into any conversational workflow.
The agents can respond to customer queries instantly, manage marketing campaigns through segmented broadcasts, facilitate conversational commerce and in-chat sales, and feed interaction data into broader CRM systems. Bots can guide customers from discovery to purchase, while preserving personalization and context.
The launch highlights how seriously companies are now taking WhatsApp as a front-end driver of sales and customer loyalty as well as a support channel.
Alan Chan, Omnichat’s Founder and CEO, described the launch as part of a broader push to make agentic AI more accessible to businesses.
“When coupled with our advanced WhatsApp functionalities, including our Social Data Customer Platform and comprehensive WhatsApp loyalty program, our objective is to empower businesses to forge a powerful social CRM.”
As consumers spend more time in messaging apps, brands are following, turning conversations into data-rich touchpoints. Rather than pushing users to websites or standalone apps, companies are meeting customers where they already are, in chat.
WhatsApp’s Growing Role in Customer Engagement
WhatsApp is increasingly becoming more than just a messaging app for friends and family. Across Asia, brands are leaning into the platform as a core customer engagement and sales channel to manage customer relationships, automate interactions and drive revenue. Customers now expect to browse, ask questions, book appointments and even complete purchases without ever leaving a chat window.
That expectation is already evident in consumer behavior. Research from Kantar shows that 71% of Hong Kong consumers message a business via WhatsApp at least once a week, underscoring how deeply embedded messaging apps have become in everyday customer journeys. Silvie Lam, Business Director, Greater China at Meta, said:
“Customers no longer just expect WhatsApp to be a customer service channel. They now expect to be able to reach out to a brand via a messaging app immediately after discovering it through social ads.”
Meta has been expanding its business-focused tools, including integrated marketing campaigns across Meta platforms and advanced AI support, to help brands scale engagement and support directly within WhatsApp.
It is positioning WhatsApp as a full-funnel business platform, supported by tools such as Ads that Click to WhatsApp, WhatsApp Catalog and WhatsApp Flows. These features allow brands to guide customers from discovery to purchase within a single conversation, while collecting data that can feed broader CRM and marketing strategies.
How Brands Are Driving Revenue and Engagement Through WhatsApp
At Omnichat’s Social CRM and AI summit this week, brands explained how they’re using the app to enable conversation-driven customer journeys, with measurable business results.
Hong Kong-based food and beverage company Maxim’s Group has adopted WhatsApp as a commerce channel rather than just a support tool. It has integrated WhatsApp to complement and expand the reach of its Eatizen membership app, using chatbots for daily operations while running targeted, AI-segmented promotions and seasonal campaigns directly through messaging.
During a recent holiday sales period, the company established an end-to-end WhatsApp buying journey, according to Eileen Tang, Head of Digital Business of Maxim’s Caterers.
“The results were immediate and profound, achieving a 2-3x higher Average Transaction Value compared to our traditional online marketplace channels.”
Tang attributed that to the simplicity of ordering and paying directly within WhatsApp, as well as lower development costs compared to building complex new features within the company’s own app. Maxim’s is now scaling its WhatsApp strategy as a long-term pillar for digital growth and customer engagement.
MEDILASE, meanwhile, focuses on using Omnichat’s WhatsApp API to bridge its online discovery and offline services. The medical aesthetics provider has automated appointment bookings, reminders and confirmations through WhatsApp, while also experimenting with interactive campaigns to attract new customers.
“By leveraging the WhatsApp API solution, we’ve deployed 24/7 chatbots and achieved seamless cross-team collaboration, significantly elevating our service standards and operational transparency,” said KC Ng, MEDILASE’s CEO. Interactive WhatsApp campaigns have shown strong engagement:
“Approximately 40% of our customers participated in an interactive WhatsApp game, which successfully resulted in a 5% conversion rate.”
Among other brands pushing WhatsApp to the forefront of customer experience strategy, French beauty brand L’Occitane has stated that WhatsApp accounts for more than 80 percent of its inbound and outbound customer conversations across Asia-Pacific. Maruti Suzuki, Air India and Flipkart are using WhatsApp Status ads and in-chat features in India to drive discovery and real-time engagement outside traditional feeds.
WhatsApp is becoming a core platform to engage customers in the channels they already prefer, reduce friction in support and sales, and tap into conversational data for smarter CRM. As more brands adopt AI-powered messaging tools, the line between chatting with a friend and interacting with a business will continue to blur.
