How your customers actually write
Open your WhatsApp inbox and look at the last fifty messages. Very few are in textbook Arabic. You will see short dialect phrases, a product name in English inside an Arabic sentence, numbers in both digit styles, Arabic typed in Latin letters, a voice note, and spellings that change from Riyadh to Jeddah to Sanaa.
That is the test any AI receptionist has to pass, and it is the reason a bot built for "Arabic" in general often fails in the Gulf. It was never tested on this.
What an Arabic-first receptionist reads
Built properly, and from the Standard package, the receptionist handles the forms that appear every day:
- Gulf and Yemeni spelling. The same word spelled three ways, hamza dropped or added, taa marbuta written as haa, final letters swapped. It matches the meaning, not the exact letters.
- Dialect words for everyday things. The regional words for "now", "how much", "is there", "send me", "where are you", in Saudi, Gulf and Yemeni usage.
- Arabic in Latin letters. The usual substitutions, digits standing for letters that have no Latin equivalent, and mixed scripts in one message.
- Mixed Arabic and English. A product name or a size in English inside an Arabic sentence, or an English question with an Arabic greeting.
- Western and Eastern digits. A price asked with either style of numerals is understood the same way.
- Voice messages. Depending on the package, a voice note is transcribed and answered in text.
The reply is simple, clear Arabic that every reader in the region understands. Owners can add a few of their usual greetings and sign-offs so it sounds like their own shop rather than a textbook.
Where it needs your help
Honesty about the gaps saves a bad launch.
- Your own product names. A local nickname for a product, a brand spelled in a dozen ways, an internal code. The receptionist learns these only if you list them in the first session. Give it the variants your customers actually use.
- Very short messages with no context. "The same as last time" or a single word needs history. The receptionist asks one clarifying question and, if the answer is still unclear, passes the chat to you.
- Noisy voice notes. A voice message recorded in a car or a market can be hard to transcribe. The fallback is a polite request to type the question, or a hand-over.
- Sensitive topics. Health, legal and money questions are not answered at all; the receptionist collects the details and hands over. Arabic understanding does not change this rule.
How we test it before it goes live
The receptionist is not switched on after a demo. It goes through your real messages.
- You export or forward fifty to a hundred real customer messages from the last months, with names removed.
- We run them through the receptionist and read every reply together, in Arabic.
- Every wrong or stiff answer becomes a correction: a new spelling variant, a new product name, a changed tone.
- We repeat until the replies would pass for your own staff on a good day.
Only then does it answer a live customer, and even then the hand-over rule catches anything it is unsure about. The way it decides to hand over is described in our article on passing a customer to the owner.
The second language
Many Gulf businesses serve English speakers, and many traders deal with Chinese suppliers and clients. Arabic is in every receptionist package. A second language, English or Chinese, comes with the Advanced package, and the receptionist answers each customer in the language they wrote in. The package details are on the services page.
What to prepare for the first session
Three things make the Arabic setup fast: the list of your products or services with the names customers use for them, your standard greeting and sign-off, and the ten questions you answer most. Bring them as screenshots if that is easier. The session takes about an hour, and most of it is reading your messages together.
If you want to see how it reads your customers' Arabic, message us on WhatsApp and forward three real messages, with the names removed.