Oh My Fudge WhatsApp Concierge

The Brief

Oh My Fudge is a premium fudge brand based in Cape Town. Their WhatsApp inbox is a firehose — wholesale enquiries, retail orders, gifting requests, stockist questions, and the odd complaint. Every message needs a human-sounding response within hours or the sale evaporates.

The founder was spending 2–3 hours a day just reading and replying to WhatsApp messages. High repetition. Low judgment. Classic BR zone.

What the AI Employee Does

• Monitors the WhatsApp Business inbox 24/7
• Classifies each incoming message by type (order, enquiry, complaint, stockist request)
• Drafts and sends the appropriate response from a library of approved templates
• Escalates anything that needs a human decision to the founder via a summary ping
• Logs every interaction to a simple spreadsheet for review

Capabilities

• Handle 80–90% of inbound WhatsApp messages without human input
• Respond within 5 minutes, any time of day
• Maintain brand voice across every interaction
• Surface weekly summary: message volume, response rate, escalations

Out of Scope

• Bespoke wholesale negotiations (escalated to founder)
• Complaints requiring refunds or replacements (escalated)
• New product enquiries before launch (held for founder response)

Build Phases

Phase 1 — Map the inbox · Audit 3 months of message history. Classify every message type. Identify the 80% that are templatable.

Phase 2 — Template library · Co-write response templates with the founder. Every template approved before deployment.

Phase 3 — Connect and supervise · Wire up WhatsApp Business API. Run in shadow mode — AI drafts, founder reviews and approves. Two weeks.

Phase 4 — Autonomous · Founder reviews weekly summary only. AI runs the inbox.

Founder Note

"I used to dread opening WhatsApp on Monday morning. Now I open a one-page summary instead."

Behind the Scenes

Platform: WhatsApp Business API via Twilio + Claude for message classification and drafting.

Trickiest bit: Teaching the AI the difference between a retail customer and a wholesale buyer — the response tone is completely different, but the messages can look identical at first glance.

The Comparable

Replacing this with a part-time VA would cost ~R8,000/month. The AI employee costs a fraction of that, works 24/7, and never has an off day.