How to build a WhatsApp chatbot for a car dealership (2026, free to start)
You need your current stock list and your finance and warranty terms, a WhatsApp number on a phone you control, and about ten minutes.
Building and testing the bot is free with a 30 message demo and no card; putting it on WhatsApp runs on the Starter plan at US$29 a month, which opens with a 7 day trial.
September 2026
What this bot does for a car dealership
Five jobs it takes off your team, with the kind of exchange you will actually see in the transcript.
Answers stock questions the minute an ad is seen
Buyers message three dealerships and buy from the one that replies. It answers mileage, year, trim and price from your stock list, at whatever hour the ad was seen.
Customeris the grey corolla from marketplace still there
BotThe 2022 Corolla in grey is still in stock: 41,000 km, one owner, full service history, 18,900. It has the safety pack and reversing camera. Do you want to see it this week?
Explains finance without a desk appointment
It gives the terms, the deposit range and an indicative monthly figure from your published table, then makes clear that the real quote comes from a person and a credit check.
Customerwhat would the monthly be on the corolla with 3000 down
BotWith 3,000 down over 48 months, the indicative payment on that car is around 340 a month at our current rate. That is a guide, not an offer: the final figure comes from a credit check and our finance manager, who can run it today.
Handles part-exchange enquiries
It collects make, model, year, mileage and condition, explains how the valuation works, and hands a salesperson a lead with the whole car already described.
Customerwould you take my 2016 golf in part exchange
BotVery likely. To value it we need the year, mileage, service history and whether it has any damage. Can you send those plus a few photos? A valuation is free and we confirm it in person, since condition decides the final number.
Books test drives and service appointments
Two different diaries, one message thread. It takes the car or the registration, two possible times and a number, then hands over for confirmation.
Customerneed a service, car is a 2019 civic
BotA full service on a 2019 Civic is 245 including parts and labour, and takes about three hours. We have Tuesday and Thursday mornings free this week. Can I take your registration and a number so service can confirm?
Answers warranty and after-sales questions
What the warranty covers, for how long, what voids it, and what a used car comes with. Questions that decide a purchase and are almost never on the ad.
Customerwhat warranty comes with a used car
BotEvery used car we sell comes with a 12 month warranty covering engine, gearbox and electrics, plus 12 months of roadside assistance. You can extend it to 24 or 36 months at the point of sale. Servicing has to stay within the schedule for it to hold.
Build it in eight steps
Steps one to five are free and take about ten minutes. Step six is where WhatsApp, and the plan, come in.
Create the account
Open chatbotgen.com and sign up with an email address or a Google account. No card is asked for here, and none is needed for anything in steps one to five.
You should see: The onboarding wizard, open on the template picker.
Pick the Sales Assistant template
Choose Sales Assistant. It loads a starting prompt, three suggested questions and a widget colour written for this kind of business, so you are editing a draft instead of facing an empty box. Every line of it is yours to change.
You should see: A new chatbot in your dashboard with the prompt already filled in.
Train it on material you already have
Open Knowledge and paste your website address; the crawler reads your public pages and turns them into the bot's memory. Then upload the documents you hand people anyway: the stock list with prices and mileage, the finance terms, the warranty conditions and the service price list.
You should see: Each source moves from processing to trained. A twenty page site is usually done in two or three minutes.
Write down the answers your website never did
Still in Knowledge, open Q&A and add the questions your staff answers on the phone all day. For a dealership that is usually: whether a car is still available, what the finance rate is, how a part-exchange valuation works, and what the warranty covers. Two sentences per answer is enough; the model writes the rest in its own words.
You should see: Each pair listed as its own source, trained within seconds.
Test it before anyone else does
Use the preview chat on the chatbot page and ask what a real customer asks. Start with "Is the 2022 Corolla still available and what would the monthly payment be?" Then ask the same thing badly, with a typo and no punctuation, because that is how it will arrive.
You should see: A correct answer with the source it came from. Wrong or vague? Fix the source, not the prompt. Your free demo covers 30 messages, which is enough for this.
Connect WhatsApp by scanning a QR code
Connect your existing WhatsApp number in about a minute by scanning a QR, with no Meta Business verification. Open the chatbot's WhatsApp tab, press Connect, and a QR code appears. On the phone that owns the number, open WhatsApp, go to Settings, Linked devices, Link a device, and scan it. No Meta Business account, no verification form, no approval queue. This step runs on the Starter plan, US$29 a month, opening with a 7 day trial.
You should see: The status flips to Connected within a few seconds, and the next customer message is answered on your own number. Keep that phone charged and online, exactly as it already sits on your counter.
Decide when a person takes over
A salesperson should take the conversation as soon as somebody asks for a specific car and a time, because that is a test drive and it needs a diary. You do not need a dashboard for this. If you answer a customer yourself from the linked phone, the bot records your message, steps back from that conversation for 30 minutes, and each further reply of yours pushes the pause forward. It resumes quietly, without announcing itself.
You should see: Your own replies appearing in the conversation history in the dashboard.
Go live, then read the first fifty conversations
Put the number on your website, your Google Business profile and your Instagram bio. Then read the transcripts. Every question the bot did not have an answer for yet is one Q&A pair away from being answered forever, and the first week is where the whole quality of the thing gets decided.
You should see: A Conversations tab filling up, and a growing share of messages answered end to end without you.
What to feed it
A bot is only as good as the material behind it. These are the sources that answer the most messages for a car dealership, in the order worth doing them.
The current stock list
Make, model, year, mileage, trim, price and what is included. Re-upload weekly. Nothing damages trust faster than a bot offering a car that sold on Friday.
Finance terms
Rates, terms available, deposit ranges and an indicative payment table. Label it as indicative, because it is.
Warranty and after-sales
What is covered, for how long, what voids it, and what the extensions cost.
The service price list
Common jobs with prices and how long each takes. Service questions are a steady share of the messages and are the easiest to answer well.
Part-exchange process
What you need to value a car, how long it takes, and whether the valuation is binding.
Opening hours and location
Showroom and workshop hours separately, since they differ, plus where to park and which entrance to use.
Set it up so customers trust it
Three settings that separate a bot people keep writing to from one they stop trusting. Each is a line in the prompt, and each one is a minute of work.
Route these to your team
- Let a salesperson confirm a car is still yours to sell. The bot answers the specification instantly and offers to check, which is what keeps a portal lead warm.
- Let your finance manager make the offer. The bot gives an indicative figure from your own table and says a credit check sets the real one.
- Let a person value a part-exchange. The bot collects year, mileage, history and photos, so the valuation starts half done.
- Keep deposits and reservations in your own flow.
It answers in your customer's language
It replies in the language the enquiry arrives in, across the thirteen the model handles well. Marketplace and portal leads do not filter by language, and the dealer who answers in the buyer's language answers first.
Hand the conversation to a person when
- Anybody asking to see or drive a specific car. That is a diary entry, not an answer.
- Any real finance application, or a question about an approval already in progress.
- Any complaint about a car sold, a repair or a warranty claim.
What people ask before they build one
How do I stop it offering cars that already sold?
Re-upload the stock list on a fixed day each week and delete the previous one, and keep the prompt telling it to confirm availability with a salesperson rather than assert it. Its job is to get an interested buyer into a conversation fast, not to be your inventory system.
Do I need a Meta Business account or the official WhatsApp API?
No. You connect by scanning a QR code from the phone that owns the number, the same way WhatsApp Web does. There is no Meta Business verification, no approval queue and no per-message fee.
Can it handle Marketplace and portal leads?
That is the main use. Those leads arrive as a WhatsApp message at unpredictable hours and go stale in minutes. The bot answers immediately with the real specification and price, and hands your salesperson a lead that already knows what the car is.
What does it cost to run?
Building and training the chatbot is free, with a 30 message demo to test it and no card. Connecting WhatsApp is on the Starter plan: US$29 a month for 3 chatbots and 2,000 messages, opening with a 7 day trial that does ask for a card. Prices are flat, not per message.
Does it work for the workshop as well as sales?
Yes, and the service side is often the easier win. Prices, durations and available slots are stable information that the workshop phone gets asked for all day. Train it on the service price list and route booking requests to whoever holds the workshop diary.
What happens when I answer a customer myself?
The bot gets out of the way. Your reply, typed on the linked phone, is recorded in the conversation and the assistant stops answering that thread for 30 minutes; every further message from you pushes the pause forward. It starts answering again quietly once the conversation has gone cold, so it can never talk over you mid-sentence.
Build it now, decide later
The Sales Assistant template, your own material and ten minutes. Nothing to install and no card for the free build.