A WhatsApp AI agent for your restaurant: what it does and where it stops

Start with what customers ask. Guests ask whether there is a table tonight, whether the kitchen can do a dish without nuts or dairy, how late you serve, whether there is parking, and whether a large group can have a set menu. An agent answers all of that from your own information. Then give it the work restaurants repeat every day:

1. Customer books via WhatsApp — Bot checks availability and confirms instantly — no calls, no staff needed.
2. 24hr & 2hr reminders sent — WhatsApp reminder with booking details and one-tap confirm or cancel.
3. Post-meal win-back timer — 45 mins after the reservation, the guest is tagged for an automatic win-back if they do not return in 30 days.
4. 30-day win-back for lapsed guests — Guests who haven't returned in 30 days get a personalised "We miss you" offer.

The agent runs these on WhatsApp in the customer's language, day and night, and writes what it did back to the contact record so staff see the full history.

1. The menu with prices, and tags for vegetarian, vegan, Jain, gluten-free, contains nuts, spicy.
2. Booking rules — table sizes, hold time for late guests, deposits for large groups and special nights.
3. Practical details — address, landmarks, parking, timings, last order time, dress code, child-friendly, accessibility.
4. Events — private dining capacity, set menus, packages.
5. Policies — outside cakes, corkage, cancellation, service charge.

An AI agent is only as accurate as what you give it. On Reputoo it answers from your knowledge base — pages crawled from your website, documents and price lists you upload, and policies you write down — rather than from general knowledge. Two rules keep it right:

• If it is not in the knowledge base, the agent says it will check and hands over, rather than guessing.
• Prices, timings and policies live in one place. Update the source and the agent's answers change with it.

It also needs to see the records your restaurant already keeps — what to connect: most restaurants already run a POS and often a table-booking system; the useful connection is the guest record, so a returning diner is recognised.

Guests rarely book in the order a form expects. "Can we get a table for six tomorrow around 8, somewhere quiet, and one of us is vegan?" contains the date, time, size, seating preference and a dietary note. The agent reads all of it, checks availability, offers the closest open time, records the preference and the dietary note on the booking, and confirms in one message. It is the difference between a conversation and a form.

"What do you recommend?" is a question the agent can answer well if you tell it what to recommend: your signature dishes, what regulars order, what pairs with what. Give it a short "house favourites" note in the knowledge base. It should recommend from the menu only, mention dietary tags when relevant, and never invent a dish or a price.

These are the moments customers remember, and they are worth a human:

• No-shows burn your revenue daily. Empty tables on Friday evening — booked, never showed, no call. 4-5 tables a week = pure lost revenue.
• Guests come once and are never heard from again. A great evening ends at the door. Nobody has their number, nobody follows up, and the table sits empty next Friday.
• Instagram DMs sit unanswered for hours. "Table for 2 tonight?" asked at 6 PM. You reply at 9 PM. They've already eaten elsewhere.

The agent can open each of these conversations and collect the details; a person should close anything involving a complaint, an exception to policy, or money that has not been agreed. Handover goes to the shared inbox with the full conversation attached.

The same agent that answers on WhatsApp can answer your restaurant's phone line as Vajra, Reputoo's voice agent, so a customer who calls gets the same answers as one who messages. It speaks 36 languages and switches to the caller's.

For group and event enquiries the agent can explain the options — capacity, set menus, packages, the deposit — and collect the date, headcount and budget. It hands to the events manager with everything attached, and tells the guest when to expect a reply. Negotiation and custom menus stay with a person.

A complaint about a meal or a delivery should be met with an apology, not a script. The agent acknowledges, asks what happened and for the order or booking details and a photo if relevant, and hands to the manager, telling the guest who will reply and when. It never offers refunds or vouchers on its own; those decisions belong to the manager.

The agent replies in the guest's language across 36 languages, including mixed Hindi and English. Tell it your restaurant's voice — warm and chatty for a neighbourhood place, polished for fine dining — and read a day of conversations as a guest would, adjusting its instructions until it sounds like your best host.

1. Load the menu with tags, booking rules and practical details.
2. Turn the agent on after closing first; review its conversations every morning.
3. Add every missing answer — a dish, a policy, a timing — the same day.
4. Move to all-day once handovers are about judgement, not missing information.

On a full night the agent can add callers and messagers to the waitlist with their party size, tell them roughly how long, and message them when a table frees. It can also answer "is it busy right now?" if the host keeps the waitlist current, which saves walk-ins a wasted trip and turns some into bookings for a later time.

The agent takes takeaway orders in the guest's own words — "two butter chicken, one garlic naan, less spicy" — maps them to the menu, reads the order back with the total, offers a pickup time and sends it to the kitchen. If a dish is unavailable today, the kitchen marks it and the agent suggests the closest alternative instead of promising it.

For deposit-backed bookings the agent sends the payment link, explains the refund rule, and confirms when payment arrives. It answers "how can I pay?" for takeaway, and hands any payment problem to the manager with the details. It never asks for card numbers, PINs or OTPs.

Guests ask "are you open on Diwali?" and "is it à la carte on New Year's Eve?". Keep these answers in one place in the knowledge base and update them before each special night; the agent then answers correctly and books only what is available. A wrong answer about opening hours is the kind of mistake guests remember.

The agent never confirms whether a named person has a booking, never shares another guest's details, and never gives out staff personal numbers. If someone asks, it offers to pass on a message. Put this in its instructions plainly; guests trust a restaurant more when its assistant is discreet.

A month of the agent's conversations shows what guests actually want: the dishes they ask about, the dietary needs that come up, the times they try to book and cannot, the questions about parking and children. Those are menu, staffing and pricing decisions hiding in plain sight — and they come from what guests said, not from what the restaurant assumed.

During service the manager is on the floor, so handovers must be quick to act on. The agent passes the chat with the booking or order, the guest's own words, and the reason — allergy, complaint, large group, a question it could not answer — and tells the guest who will reply and roughly when. The manager reads one message and knows exactly what to do.

A neighbourhood dhaba and a fine-dining room should not sound the same. Tell the agent, in its instructions, how your restaurant talks — how to greet, whether to use emojis, how formal to be — and what it should never do, such as pushing a promotion into a complaint. Read a day of its replies as a guest would, and adjust until they sound like your best host on a good night.