Guide · AI agents · For the owner whose customers keep asking where their order is

Letting Meta's AI agent answer 'where is my order?' and take a basket on WhatsApp: what Meta says to decide first

Meta's AI agent for business can look up a customer's order and build a basket over a WhatsApp conversation. Meta has published two guides on doing both, and most of what they say is not about technology. It is about decisions the business has to make before the agent says anything to a customer.

Published 6 October 2026

Decide first: what a phone number entitles someone to

Meta's order guide starts with a policy question, not a technical one. A WhatsApp message tells the business which number it came from, not who is holding the phone. Meta sets out three levels and says the choice has to be made, and written down, before the agent is built.

Phone number match alone: The agent gives the order's status and expected date, and nothing else: no address, no payment details. Meta calls this reasonable for low-value goods going to an address the household already uses.
Phone number plus one detail: The same, after the customer confirms something such as a postcode or the order total. For higher-value goods, or where the delivery address may be new.
Full verification: Everything, including address and payment state, after the customer logs in with a one-time code. For regulated or high-value goods, or anything going to a new address.

Whichever level a business picks, Meta's advice is to keep the answer small. A status and a date answer the question. An address and a full list of items are what someone holding a borrowed phone would like to see.

Where is my order: what Meta tells businesses to build in

Look the order up before asking for a number: Most customers have one open order, and Meta calls asking for a reference the part of automated support customers dislike most. The agent finds the orders from the conversation, asks which one only when there are several, and asks for a reference only when none are open.
Plain words, from the business's own system: Warehouse states mean little to a customer. Meta says the business's system should return a plain sentence with each state, so the wording is tested and kept in one place, and singles out the gap after a parcel is handed to the courier and before its first scan as the state that brings the most repeat messages.
Exact references, checked every time: Given part of a reference, an agent will find the closest match and report on it confidently. Meta says references must match exactly, and the business's system must check the order belongs to the customer asking.
No reassurance the data does not support: Meta names 'It should be with you soon' as the most common untrue sentence these agents produce. The agent reports what the system returned and stops there.
Late orders go to a person: The business's system, not the agent, decides when an order counts as delayed. When it does, the agent says the delivery looks delayed and passes the conversation to a colleague, with the order reference and the reason noted so nobody has to ask again.
Decide what happens at night: Meta's example: handing a customer to an empty queue at 23:00 is worse than saying when the team is back.

How a conversation passes from an agent to a person, and back, is covered in the conversation routing guide.

Taking a basket: what Meta tells businesses to build in

A chat has no screen showing the basket, customers describe items instead of pointing at them, and several messages can pass between choosing and confirming. Meta's cart guide says the agent can run this, but only on these terms.

The basket lives in the business's system: Not in the conversation. Meta warns that a basket rebuilt from memory will be plausible and wrong, usually by one quantity, or by an item the customer considered and dropped.
Read it before and after every change: The agent reads the current basket before changing it, and tells the customer what the basket says afterwards, not what it meant to do.
'Add three' is not 'make it three': Meta calls mixing the two the most common wrong change. And the agent asks for a quantity rather than assuming one.
Limits are checked before anything changes: Per item, per basket, and legal limits. A refusal comes back with the maximum and the current quantity, so the agent can offer the most allowed, and a change is made in full or not at all.
The agent does not do the sums: The business's system returns the subtotal, any discount and the item count, and the agent reads them out.
A clear yes, then a final check: Stock can change during a long conversation, so availability is checked again at confirmation, the customer must say yes before checkout, and the agent says what is not yet included, such as delivery and taxes.

Before it answers real customers

Test the unhappy cases. Meta's list includes several open orders, none, a wrong reference, someone else's reference, an order waiting for stock, a late order, tracking that has not moved for days, a parcel marked delivered that never arrived, and the order system being down. Meta says these are where agents say something untrue.
Test the basket the same way. Vague references, add against set, limits, an item going out of stock mid-basket, and a customer who says no at the end.
Watch it after launch. Meta suggests tracking how often orders come back flagged as delayed, because customers notice delivery problems before internal reports do, and how many baskets started end up confirmed.

What Meta's agent is, and how it shares a number with a team, is in the Meta business agent guide.

Questions

Will Meta's agent ask customers for their order number?

Not first, if it is set up the way Meta's guide describes. It looks up the customer's open orders, asks which one only when there are several, and asks for a reference only when it finds none open.

Can the agent tell a customer their delivery address?

Meta's example at the lowest level leaves addresses and payment details out of what the agent can see at all. Meta says full detail belongs behind full verification, where the customer logs in with a one-time code.

What should the agent say when a delivery is late?

That it looks delayed, and then hand the conversation to a person with the order reference and the reason. Meta warns specifically against 'it should be with you soon'.

Can the agent work out the basket total?

Meta says it should not. The business's own system returns the subtotal, discount and item count, and the agent reads them out.

Does this need our own order system?

Yes. Meta's guides assume the business has a web service the agent can call to list orders, give one order's status, and read and change a basket. The agent reports what that service returns.

Sources

Meta's developer documentation: Meta Business Agent, Order status checks, read 6 October 2026.
Meta's developer documentation: Meta Business Agent, Multi-item cart management, read 6 October 2026.
Meta's developer documentation: Meta Business Agent overview, read 6 October 2026.

More plain-language notes like this one are on the guides page.

Want a person ready when the agent hands over?

We set up a business's WhatsApp number on a system its team runs, so when an AI agent passes a customer to a person, the conversation lands in one place the business owns. A short call is the easiest way to see how that would work for you.

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