The idea is to allow people to book tickets (movies/flights/sports/etc.) and pay all sorts of bills via WhatsApp. You simply chat with my company's automated WA Business Account and get things done.
"Simply" is carrying a lot of weight there.
No, I would prefer not to slowly talk to an AI of unknown quality, waiting for its responses, trying to guess what magic words I need to say, when instead I can load up a website and use an interface that actually shows me things.
True. OP underestimates the actual problem in making this "simple" enough. Sounds like a good problem to be solved, but not sure if this can be solved properly.
I’ve basically done (had to do) this for lodging and transport in parts of the world where a web presence (and digital business architecture) are less common, though obviously without the AI (I assume). It’s not my favorite way to book things but it works. It’s not a terrible idea by any means and I’m sure it will be incorporated into many apps in the future - I say just build the dang thing and FB will prolly buy you out before you have to deal with a lot of the really hard problems. Focus on a particular market so you can hone in on getting it right for that one thing and accumulating some users and reputation.
I won't enter that territory of dealing with small, local businesses since there's very little ROI for them - while they can use automation, it will neither bring more customers nor reduce the overall costs nor help them in getting the products delivered to their customers. My plan is as stated in the (original) post.