Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp are all good places to sell. The mistake many shops make is trying to automate all three at once, then abandoning the project because it feels big. A better plan is to pick one channel, get it working well, and add the others later.
Start from your own numbers, not from guesses
Open each inbox and look at the last two weeks. Where do most buying questions arrive? Where do customers wait the longest for a reply? The channel with the most questions and the slowest answers is where an AI agent helps first.
Facebook Messenger
Best for shops whose customers come from Facebook posts, pages and ads. Questions often start as comments ("price?") and move into the inbox. With comment automation you can reply to the comment and continue the conversation in a private message. Setup is covered in Connecting Facebook Messenger and Comment Automation.
Best for fashion, beauty, food and gift sellers whose products sell through photos and stories. Customers tend to send a screenshot and ask "available?" Fast answers matter because the customer is usually still scrolling. See Connecting Instagram.
Best for repeat customers, wholesale and anyone who prefers a direct, personal conversation. Customers often share their phone number and address directly, which makes order taking smooth. See Connecting WhatsApp for the available connection options.
A quick way to decide
- Most of your sales start from Facebook ads or posts: begin with Messenger.
- Your products are very visual and your audience lives on Instagram: begin with Instagram.
- Your buyers are repeat customers or business buyers: begin with WhatsApp.
Whichever you choose, do these three things first
- Teach the agent your top ten questions: price, stock, sizes, delivery time, delivery charge, return policy and so on.
- Decide when a human takes over: complaints, negotiation, anything the agent cannot answer.
- Review a sample of chats after the first few days and fix what the agent missed.
Add the next channel when the first one is calm
When replies on your first channel are fast and accurate and you rarely need to correct the agent, connect the second. Your agent's knowledge can be reused, so the second channel is much faster than the first. For the full walkthrough, follow our step-by-step setup guide and compare plans to see how many channels each includes.
