How do you create and deploy an AI Assistant on WhatsApp or Instagram?
- Nishant Das
- Jul 22
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 30
On Cheerio AI, you can now create and deploy AI Assistants on your WABA Number or Instagram Account.
The content in this will help you understand what are AI Assistant, why they are needed and how you can create a one for your business.
CONTENTS 1. What are AI Assistants?
2 Why are they even needed in the first place?
3 How to create one for your business?
4 How to deploy on your WABA or Instagram?
What are AI Assistants?
AI assistants are nothing but LLM-powered chatbots that can read, analyse, write, and converse with your customers on behalf of a real human agent. AI assistants are powered by various LLM Models like ChatGPT, Anthorpe, Meta AI, DeepSeek, etc.
You can select various models for various assistants as per your requirement. Every assistant works on an input and output token system. For every million tokens, whether input or output. Cheerio will charge you from your wallet automatically.
You can compare pricing on the platform itself while creating an assistant.
You can train these assistants on your company's data, frequently asked questions, help articles, and more which will explore in point no. 3.
Why are they even needed in the first place?
AI assistants are smart, intelligent, and efficient bots that can handle lakhs of users automatically 24 * 7 without the need for any assistance.
They are extremely powerful, reliable, cost-effective, and
Can be trained over millions of data sets and structures
Can be customizable to a specific use case
Can control tone, languages, mood, and effectiveness
Can replace 1000+ human agents on its own
It can help businesses scale at a faster pace with reduced cost and automatic functioning.
How to create one for your business?
To create your first assistant, follow the steps mentioned below.
3.1 Log in to your Cheerio Account and go to the "Automation". Within Automation, you will find AI Assistants, Click on it.
3.2 Click on the "Create Assistant" button in the top right corner to get started.
3.3 Now you can see "Assistant Settings" on the left side, and the Message ground on the right side of the screen. Message ground will help you test the responses from your AI Assistant and improvise them in real-time.
3.4 Name your assistant whatever you want it to be. For eg: Ray, Kate, Xia, Jarvis
3.5 Select the GPT Model from the list of options. You can select whichever you want for your use case and requirement.
Why different models?
Different AI models give you different outputs to the same questions. Some provide detailed outputs while some keep it short, crisp, and action-oriented at different price points. You can hit and trial with different AI Models and choose which works best for you.
3.6 Now you have to set instructions for your AI Assistant.
What are instructions?
Instructions help personalize your AI Assistant’s behavior and tone. They guide the assistant on how to respond, what context to remember, and what role it should play like being more casual, technical, concise, or strategic so it better matches your needs.
A few-shot examples of Instructions are:
Consider yourself as "Riya", an AI sales assistant for a fashion store. Your job is to help customers find the right products, answer questions about size, delivery, and return policy. You should ask questions to understand their needs, recommend products based on their replies, and share purchase links. Be friendly, stylish, and helpful. If something is unclear, politely ask the customer again.
Consider yourself as "Fixi", an AI booking assistant for a home services business. Your job is to help customers book appointments, explain services offered, and check location & timing preferences. Always ask clear follow-up questions to confirm the details. Be polite and to-the-point. If confused, ask the customer to repeat.
Consider yourself as "EduBot", an AI counselor for a coaching institute. Your job is to guide students/parents about courses, batch timings, and fees. Ask about the student’s grade, subjects of interest, and learning goals before suggesting anything. Maintain an encouraging and respectful tone. Clarify if any detail is missing.
You can create a similar sort of instructions for your AI Assistant by taking the above references.
3.7 Upload relevant documentation, help articles for the knowledge base
PS: Make sure that the documentation has textual data to read from. Any image or scanned-based data might lead to improper responses
3.8 Set up a fallback response: if no relevant detail is found regarding the query. This response will be sent to the user.
3.9 Advanced exit settings: You can set up auto exits for the AI Assistant after a set interval of time or a set number of responses.
PS: These settings are important to move the chat out of the AI Assistant. If the exit settings are not calibrated, the chat will never move out of AI Assistant and no agent or keyword based responses will be triggered.
3.10 Click on save and start asking questions using Message Ground. If you're satisfied, you can move on to the next steps, or else you can plan around with instructions and knowledge base for further improvements.
How to deploy on your WABA or Instagram?
Once your assistant is created and saved.
4.1 Head over to workflows and create a new flow
4.2 Select either "Incoming WhatsApp" or "Instagram Event" to use. Remember, you can use either one of them in a flow. To deploy to both places, you will need two different workflows.
4.3 Drag and drop " Assign AI Assistant" and select your assistant, which you have created.
4.4 Use the "End flow" at the end to make sure that the flow automatically ends and the user can move out of the flow for other keyword-based or human-based responses.
4.5 Click on save. Now you can trigger this workflow by using any keyword.
For any details or queries, please reach out to our support team.
