Nexium Pilot is our newest own product, and it is in development. It has not launched. This post explains what we are building and why, so that the people it is for can tell us whether we have it right.
The problem
Small businesses in Nigeria sell in chat. A customer finds a shop on Instagram, asks about price and size in the DMs, then moves to WhatsApp to confirm delivery. The owner answers every one of those messages by hand, often late at night, while the catalog lives in a notes app and orders live in a spreadsheet.
Generic chatbots do not solve this. They answer from general knowledge instead of the business's own stock, orders and policies, and they make it hard for a real person to step in.
What Nexium Pilot is
Nexium Pilot has two parts that work together.
Commerce tools. A storefront, a catalog and order management, the basics a small business needs to sell.
An AI assistant called Pilot. A business connects its own Instagram account, Facebook Page and WhatsApp number by logging in and authorising access. When a customer messages the business, Pilot can reply in the same chat.
How Pilot is designed to behave
- Only the business's own information. Replies are limited to that business's catalog, orders and policies. Pilot is not meant to answer from anything else.
- Customers message first. Pilot responds to people who have contacted the business. It does not start conversations.
- A person is always available. A customer can ask for a human at any time, and the business can take over any conversation.
- Clear disclosure. Businesses tell their customers that an AI assistant may reply, in line with Meta's platform rules.
- Your accounts, your control. Access tokens are encrypted at rest, and a business can disconnect a channel whenever it likes.
Where things stand
Nexium Pilot is in development and early access. We are not publishing usage numbers or customer results, because there are none to share yet. Nigeria comes first.
If you run a small business and want a place when early access opens, join the list on the Nexium Pilot page. We will reach out personally.