Exodus Labs AIWho answers when it does not know?
Ask what happens when a customer asks something the system was never given. A good one says so and hands it to a person.
A weak one guesses, and a confident wrong answer about a price or a doctor costs you more than silence. Ask to see that handover, not the happy path.
Is anyone watching it?
This question matters most, and almost nobody asks it. A system nobody monitors stops working quietly: a connection drops, a number gets flagged, a reply goes wrong, with no error message, just a slow leak of customers who wrote and heard nothing back.
Ask who checks it, how often, and how they learn the moment it stops. If the answer is that you would notice, walk away.
Who pays Meta, and do they mark it up?
WhatsApp is not free at scale. Meta bills the platform per message, at Meta's rate, not the vendor's. Ask whether those fees pass straight through to you at cost, on your own account, or get quietly marked up inside a monthly figure.
Ask for the Tanzania rate in writing. We wrote a fuller breakdown of what WhatsApp actually costs here.
Does it really speak Swahili, or just translate?
If your customers write in Swahili, a system answering in stiff translated Swahili is worse than one that politely stays in English.
And a real customer switches between Swahili and English mid sentence, so it has to follow, not trip. Do not take that as a slide promise. Ask to see it hold a real conversation the way your customers write.
Whose data is it?
Every customer who writes becomes a record. Ask three things. Can you export those records whenever you want. Do you keep them if you leave. Is your data ever sold, or used to train something for another client.
That last answer should be a flat no. Your customers are the most valuable thing the system touches, and should never quietly become somebody else's asset.
What happens when your prices change?
A clinic changes its hours, a shop runs out of a line, a price moves. Does the assistant still say the old thing? Ask who keeps it matching reality, and how fast.
A system that is right on launch day and slowly drifts wrong is not a saving, it is a liability with a good first impression.
What if it does not work?
Ask who carries the risk. If the system does not do the job agreed, do they keep working at their own cost until it does, or does the meter run either way?
You are buying an outcome, and whoever sells it should stand behind that outcome in writing, not just until the invoice clears.
The demo is the easy part
Anyone can make a system look good for ten minutes. The questions above are one question asked six ways: will this still be working, and still be right, long after the demo has worn off. That is the whole job, and the part most people forget to buy.
See how we answer each of these on the pricing page and in how the WhatsApp assistant is built, or bring your own list to the free audit and make us answer out loud.
Straight answers
Which question matters most?
Is anyone watching it. An unwatched system fails quietly and your customers find out before you do. Everything else matters less than that.
How do I test the Swahili?
Ask it to hold a real conversation the way your customers write, switching between Swahili and English. See it done, do not accept it promised.
What about my data?
You should be able to export it whenever you want, keep it if you leave, and it should never be sold or used to train something for another client.
Bring your list to the audit
Ask us every question here, out loud, with your own numbers on the table. The audit is free, it takes about thirty minutes, and you keep the findings either way.