Jawabkan
A supplier’s WhatsApp is not a shop’s. The people messaging you are contractors, workshops, resellers and purchasing staff, and most of them already know your range. They write in shorthand: “Harga sekotak?” “MOQ berapa?” “Ada spec sheet?” “Berapa hari sampai Johor?” And what they read in the chat becomes a purchase order, an invoice, or a line in somebody else’s project.
That last part is what matters. In a shop, a wrong answer loses a sale. For a supplier, a wrong answer in writing becomes a dispute. So the useful question is not whether an assistant can answer your buyers. It is which answers it can give from your own price list, and which ones must reach your team every time.
The questions that are lookups
Most of what buyers ask a supplier already has an answer in a price list, a datasheet or a delivery note, and someone on your team types it out again. These are the questions an assistant should answer, in seconds, exactly as you approved them:
| What buyers ask | What the assistant answers from |
|---|---|
| “Price per carton?” | Your list price for each pack size |
| “What’s the MOQ?” | Your minimum order and pack quantities |
| “Can you send the spec?” | The specifications you approved: sizes, ratings, materials, models |
| “How many days to Johor?” | Your delivery areas, charges and usual lead times |
| “How do I order?” | The first step you want: a PO by email, an order form, a call |
| “Cash or transfer? Any terms?” | Your payment methods, and your standard terms if buyers should be told them |
| “Can I collect today?” | Office, warehouse and collection hours, your address and a landmark |
None of these needs judgement. They need the same correct answer at 10 PM on a Saturday as at 10 AM on a Monday, and that is exactly what five people answering one WhatsApp find hard to give.
Four things it must never guess
1. A quotation
The assistant states the list price that is in your approved price list, and nothing else. Dealer pricing, volume pricing, project pricing and anything negotiated goes to your team with the conversation. A price typed into a chat is a quotation the buyer will hold you to, and a buyer who is given a discount once will ask for it every time.
2. Stock for a particular order
If you keep a list of what you normally stock up to date, the assistant can say an item is stocked. It cannot hold units, and it cannot confirm that 200 units are there for this buyer’s order. Stock moves faster than any list, and “yes, we have it” in writing is a reservation the buyer believes they have made.
3. A delivery date for an order
“Klang Valley is usually the next working day” is a fact about how you operate. “It will reach you on Friday” is a promise about one lorry. The first can be answered from your delivery note. The second belongs to whoever plans dispatch.
4. A specification you never wrote down
Ratings, dimensions, materials and compatibility come only from the sheets you approved. Anything not on them, and every “will this work for my application?”, goes to someone who knows the product. A guessed load rating does not stay in the chat. It ends up in somebody’s installation.
Credit terms for a new account, complaints, returns and warranty claims go to your team as well. Those are conversations about a relationship, not lookups.
Answer the lookups. Hand over the commitments.
What a good hand-over looks like
Handing over does not mean going quiet. The buyer still gets every answer that is a lookup, and is told plainly who will answer the rest. Here is an example from a fictional distributor:
Buyer: “Price for 500 cartons? Project in Seremban, need it next week.”
Assistant: “Our list price is RM48 per carton of 24, and the minimum order is 10 cartons. Delivery to Seremban usually takes 2 working days from order. For 500 cartons, the project price and the delivery date will come from our sales team. I have passed your request to them with this conversation.”
Your team then opens one message that already says 500 cartons, Seremban, next week. They reply once, with a quotation, instead of starting with three questions.
Getting your price list ready
The assistant can only be as exact as the list it answers from. Five things make the difference:
- Price by pack size, not by piece. “RM48 per carton of 24” cannot be misread. “RM2 each” invites an order for 7 pieces of something you only sell by the carton.
- A date on the list. “List prices as of 1 November” tells the buyer, and the assistant, how fresh the number is.
- Only the list price. Leave dealer tiers and project rates out of the facts. Those are the conversations you want handed to you.
- Lead times as “usually”. Give a usual time for each area, and leave out anything you would only promise for a particular order.
- Specifications from the datasheet. Copy the values from the manufacturer’s sheet, not from memory. If a value is not on the sheet, it is not in the facts.
A spreadsheet, a PDF catalogue or a photo of the printed list is enough to start. What matters is that every number in it is one you would sign.
What this is not
It is not a quotation system, an ordering system or a CRM, and it does not send broadcasts. Your team keeps quoting, your system keeps the orders, and nothing goes to a buyer who did not message you first. The assistant’s job is narrower: answer the questions that are lookups, the same way every time, and put everything else in front of your team with the conversation attached.
That is how Jawabkan works for suppliers and distributors: it answers from the price list and specifications you approve, and hands every quotation, stock hold and delivery commitment to your team.
