AI customer service, South Africa
Customer service that answers at 21:47, and knows when to hand over
IndunAI answers your customers on WhatsApp, on your website and by email, at any hour, from your own knowledge and your own price list. When a question needs a person, it hands the conversation to your team with the reason and the whole chat attached, instead of guessing.
Ask it something hard. The chat bubble on this page is our own assistant. Try a question it cannot know the answer to, and see what it does instead of making one up.
online, replies in seconds
Hi, my order was meant to come Friday and it still isn't here. Not happy.21:47
I'm sorry, that is frustrating. I can't see courier tracking from here, so I've passed this to the team with your order details, and a person will come back to you when the team is in tomorrow.21:47
OK. Also do you do gift wrapping?21:48
We do, R35 per item. You can ask for it when you order.21:48
An illustration of the pattern. The price comes from the business's own list; the delivery problem goes to a person with the context attached.
Where the answers come from
Answering from your own knowledge, not the internet.
A general chatbot answers from everything it ever read, which is how a customer ends up being quoted somebody else's prices. An AI customer service agent for your business should know your business and very little else, and say so when it does not.
Your knowledge cards
Question and answer pairs you write in the dashboard: parking, what to bring, how long a job takes, whether you work weekends. You can also fill them from your own documents and review what was drafted before it goes live.
Your price list
Prices come from the list you loaded. On WhatsApp the rate card is composed by the server and sent whole, so the AI never retypes a figure, and anything not on the list becomes a quote request a person prices.
Your house rules
The tone you want and the standing instructions for your trade, in your own words. Setup starts from a template for your kind of business, so the basics are there on day one.
"Let me check with the team"
When a customer asks something your information does not cover, the answer is that the team will confirm it, never a refusal and never an invention. The gap shows you which knowledge card to write next.
Where customers write
WhatsApp, website and email in one inbox.
South African customers mostly WhatsApp, some use the chat on your site, and the formal ones email. The assistant answers all three with the same knowledge, and your team reads them all on one Conversations tab, with a search box and a note of where each conversation started.
On your own business number through Meta's official WhatsApp Business Platform. With coexistence, you keep using the WhatsApp Business app on the same number and your replies there count as a person taking over. More on the WhatsApp AI chatbot.
Website chat
A chat bubble added to your site with one line of code, , with your own avatar, answering the same way. The AI chatbot page covers what goes on the site.
AI email replies from your own mailbox, in the same thread. Automated mail is never answered, so two autoresponders cannot get into an argument, and replies are capped per address per day. Email can also be send-only if you would rather keep the inbox for people.
It replies in the language the customer writes in, and Afrikaans is built into the parts the server writes itself. It can also answer your Facebook Messenger and Instagram messages.
The part that matters
Handing over to a person.
An AI support agent that never hands over is a wall. One that hands over everything is a very expensive voicemail. The job is to know which is which, and to make the handover cost your team nothing.
When it hands over
When the customer asks for a person, when they are unhappy, and when the matter is high-stakes: money, safety, legal, or their own personal information.
What your team gets
An alert on WhatsApp and by email with the reason and the urgency, and a line on the Escalations tab that opens the whole conversation. Nobody has to ask the customer to start again.
How a person takes over
Reply from the dashboard, or pause the assistant on that conversation. A second request on a chat already handed over is acknowledged rather than filed twice, so your phone does not ring four times for one person.
Your hours, your phone
Set team hours and your staff answer by day while the assistant covers the rest. Alerts have quiet hours and per-type mutes, and the number alerts go to can be kept private from customers.
When it goes wrong
Complaints and escalations.
A complaint at 21:47 is where most small businesses lose a customer, because nobody answers until the morning and by then it is a one-star review. The assistant answers in the same minute, and it answers well.
Calm, once
It is told to stay even through complaints, confusion and rudeness: one honest acknowledgement, no defensiveness, no string of apologies, then whatever can actually be fixed.
No promises it cannot keep
A disputed invoice, "I already paid" or "that job never happened" is never argued and never settled by the AI. It passes the customer's exact words to your team and never promises a refund, a discount or a void.
The hard exception
If somebody discloses that they are thinking of harming themselves, they get help lines at once and a person is alerted. No block, rate limit or gate on a customer-facing assistant is allowed to silence that.
The price, on the page
What it costs vs a support hire.
IndunAI costs from R1 450 a month including VAT for the assistant as it is, for up to 300 conversations, plus a once-off R2 500 setup (fully managed is R4 995 a month): WhatsApp, website chat and email answering, booking, reminders and the handover machinery. Meta's WhatsApp message fees are Meta's, separate, and explained in WhatsApp Business costs. Work that goes past the product, such as a system of yours it has to talk to, is scoped and priced per project.
What it is better at
Answering in the same minute at any hour, the same way every time, from the same facts. The fortieth "are you open on Saturday?" of the week costs it nothing.
What your people are better at
Judgement, refunds, a customer who needs reassurance from a human, and anything your information does not cover. The assistant is built to send those to them, not to compete.
How to compare honestly
Do not compare it to a salary. Compare it to the evening and weekend messages nobody answers today, and to the hours your team spends on repeat questions. What a receptionist really costs is worked through in its own guide.
Said plainly
Not a call centre: what we do not replace.
IndunAI is a customer service assistant for small businesses that answer customers in writing. It is not a contact centre platform, and it is better to say so here than after you have bought it.
It answers messages, not phone calls
There is no phone line answering and no outbound calling today. Voice is coming; until it ships, callers still reach your people.
Not a ticketing desk
There are no agent seats, queues or service-level timers to manage. Conversations and escalations are lists your team works from, sized for a small business.
Not a replacement for your team
It takes the repeat questions and the hours nobody covers. The judgement calls stay with your people, and that is the design, not a limitation we are working around.
Each business gets its own isolated instance, hosted in Johannesburg; the AI model that composes the replies runs outside South Africa. The details, and what POPIA asks of a chatbot, are in POPIA and AI chatbots. If booking is most of what your front desk does, start with the AI receptionist instead.
FAQ
Fair questions.
Can it answer emails?
Yes. Connect your business mailbox and the assistant reads new mail and replies in the same thread, from the same knowledge it uses on WhatsApp, and it can book an appointment by email too. It never answers automated mail such as out-of-office replies and newsletters. If you would rather it only sent email and never replied, that is one switch.
How does it hand over to my staff?
It files a hand-off with the reason and the urgency, your team gets an alert on WhatsApp and by email, and the request appears on the Escalations tab with the whole conversation behind it. The customer is told a person will pick it up, and your team replies from the dashboard, or from the WhatsApp Business app where you run it on the same number.
Can it deal with complaints?
It stays calm and helpful, acknowledges the problem once, and fixes what can be fixed from your own information. Anything that needs a decision, such as a refund, a disputed invoice or an unhappy customer who wants a person, is handed to your team with their exact words. It never promises a refund, a discount or a void.
What does it do after hours?
It answers in seconds from your own information, books into your real calendar where a time is free, takes the details of anything it cannot finish, and files a hand-off so your team sees it first thing. Set team hours and your staff answer by day while the assistant covers evenings and weekends.
Does it replace my support team?
No. It takes the repeat questions, the after-hours messages and the admin, and hands the rest to your people with the context already gathered. You can set team hours so your staff answer by day and the assistant covers the evenings and weekends.
Ask it a hard customer question.
The assistant on this page is ours. Give it the question your customers ask that you dread, or one it cannot possibly know, and watch whether it answers, admits it, or hands over.
Written the same way: what it does, what it does not, and how to check it yourself.