It's Tuesday, twenty to ten at night. You pulled the shutter down on the garage two hours ago, and a customer messages you on WhatsApp: the car makes a strange noise when braking, and could they bring it in tomorrow? The assistant replies within seconds. It tells them when you open, asks for the make and model and whether it's urgent, and offers the two slots you still have free on Thursday morning. The customer picks 8:30 and gets a confirmation. You find out the next morning over coffee, when you open your calendar and see the appointment there and the whole conversation saved on that customer's record.
A virtual assistant handles that first stretch of the conversation at any hour, on WhatsApp, through the form on your website or by email. We set it up with your information, on top of the calendar and tools you already use.
It answers with what you've told it
The assistant replies using the information you give it: your hours, the area you cover, your terms and the real openings in your calendar. If someone asks something that isn't in there, it tells them it doesn't know and that a person will confirm tomorrow, then leaves the question flagged for someone on your team.
It makes no difference where the customer writes from. WhatsApp, the website form and the contact inbox all land in the same conversation, so if someone fills in the form on Monday and messages on WhatsApp on Wednesday, the assistant knows it's the same person.
Then come the questions. In most businesses, three are enough to tell someone browsing from someone ready to buy. At a real estate agency they tend to be budget, area and timing; at a clinic, which treatment they want and when they can come in. We pick them with you, since you know which answer makes you reach for the phone. Based on the replies, the assistant offers open slots from your Google or Microsoft calendar, confirms the appointment and sends a reminder. If someone cancels, it offers that slot to whoever was waiting for one.
What still goes through a person
Some conversations the assistant doesn't handle alone. A complaint, someone who wants to negotiate, or a question it isn't sure how to answer goes into your queue with the full conversation attached, and whoever picks it up doesn't have to ask again what the customer already said. Anything doubtful waits in a two-click review until you decide.
It doesn't answer the phone either. We ruled out a synthetic voice because of the per-minute cost and because a badly handled call costs more than it saves, so calls stay with someone on your team.
Every conversation ends up on the customer's record, in the CRM you already have or in ours if you don't have one. On Monday nobody has to retype what was said on the phone over the weekend, and a colleague picking up a customer can see what they asked, what they were told and when their appointment is.
Real estate agencies feel it first
Buyers look at homes when they have time, which tends to be evenings and weekends. Someone who writes at eleven on Saturday night and hears nothing back often ends up touring the place with another agency on Monday. That's why we turned this assistant into a product for real estate agencies, the sales assistant: it qualifies on budget, area and timing, books the viewing on the agent's calendar and logs everything in the CRM. We're working on bringing inquiries from Idealista, Fotocasa and Habitaclia into that same conversation. It depends on what each portal allows a small agency to do, and we're checking that before we promise it.
Outside real estate it works the same way for clinics, auto repair shops and tutoring centers. Meta bills WhatsApp messages separately, between €5 and €25 a month for a small business, and we put that figure in writing before you sign.