What's Cooking at Wati — May 2026
May was about depth. Shopify gets a full upgrade —> from cart recovery to a cleaner analytics dashboard. Astra's voice agent becomes a genuine conversational partner with interruption handling, cleaner transcripts, and 9 Indian languages. Here's everything that shipped.
🛍️ Wati for Shopify
Recover carts before they reach checkout
Why this matters
Abandoned checkouts only tell half the story. The shoppers most likely to convert are the ones who added items and disappeared before they even got to checkout — and until now, they were invisible.
The update
Wati now tracks Add to Cart events on Shopify. When a shopper adds items and leaves, a pre-built 3-step recovery sequence fires automatically on WhatsApp or RCS — at 30 minutes, 6 hours, and 24 hours. The sequence stops the moment they reply, start checkout, or place an order. Enable in one click — no building from scratch.
Plan: Growth, Pro, Business
Build custom Shopify automation rules across any channel
Why this matters
Merchants who needed multi-step custom logic — branching conditions, fallback channels, non-standard timing — had to work around Wati's fixed automation options.
The update
Shopify events are now triggers inside Wati's Automation Rules engine. Build fully custom WhatsApp, RCS, or SMS workflows tied to any Shopify moment. Channel fallback is configurable within each rule, and attribution — Revenue, ROI, Conversion Rate — is tracked at rule level. Abandoned Checkout and Abandoned Cart rules ship pre-built and ready to enable.
Plan: Growth, Pro, Business
Go from install to live automation the same day
Why this matters
Most merchants who installed Wati for Shopify never activated a single automation in their first two weeks. The setup flow buried the steps that actually mattered.
The update
Onboarding is rebuilt into a 2-stage Quick Start. A short questionnaire adapts the flow to your experience level. The setup dashboard then surfaces only the minimum steps to go live — showing your actual store data (revenue at risk, live abandoned checkout count) so there's a reason to act immediately.
Plan: Growth, Pro, Business
One consistent analytics view across all Shopify automations
Why this matters
Metric names changed between tabs, definitions were inconsistent, and there were no clear funnel indicators — making it hard to compare performance or trust what the numbers were saying.
The update
The Shopify analytics dashboard is fully redesigned with three consistent layers across every trigger: Hero Metrics (Spend, Orders, Revenue, ROI), Health Metrics (Sent, Delivered, Delivery Rate, Clicked), and trigger-specific funnel data. RCS is tracked alongside WhatsApp, and Automation Rules data feeds into the same dashboard.
Plan: Growth, Pro, Business
Create contact segments via API
Why this matters
Teams managing large audiences at scale needed programmatic control over how contacts are grouped — without having to touch the Wati dashboard every time.
The update
Custom contact segments can now be created and managed via API, giving developers and power users full control over audience segmentation.
Plan: Growth, Pro, Business
📞 WhatsApp Calling
Every call recording, transcript, and AI summary — in one place
Why this matters
Recordings, transcripts, and summaries were scattered across views, making it hard for managers to review call quality, coach agents, or pull material for audits without digging around.
The update
The new Call Recording vault centralises every recording alongside its AI-generated transcript and summary. Filter by call type, operator, date range, or business number. Download individual recordings or export up to 50 at once for audits and reviews.
Plan: Growth, Pro, Business (requires WhatsApp Calling)
Set a retention policy — Wati handles compliance automatically
Why this matters
In regulated industries, holding call recordings longer than required is a compliance risk. Managing deletion manually is error-prone and easy to forget.
The update
Admins can now configure an auto-deletion policy per account — choose a retention duration and Wati removes recordings automatically once they age past it. Auto-deletion is off by default; opt in based on your regulatory or internal requirements.
Plan: Growth, Pro, Business (requires WhatsApp Calling)
📊 Ads
See the full funnel from Google and TikTok ads to WhatsApp
Why this matters
Customers running Google or TikTok ads had no visibility into what happened after a click — no way to see whether someone became a lead, started a conversation, or converted.
The update
Full-funnel conversion analytics are now live for whitelisted Google and TikTok ad accounts. View performance from ad click to lead qualification and purchase directly in Wati, and retarget high-intent contacts from the same view.
Plan: Business (available upon whitelisting — contact your CSM)
💡 Better AI Support Agent Capabilities
On Knowbot? Time to move to Astra.
Why this matters
Knowbot served its purpose, but Astra is where the AI roadmap lives — a more capable knowledge base, truly autonomous conversations, richer tool calling, and full control over agent behaviour.
The update
Migrating from Knowbot to Astra is now one click. Context is auto-extracted — no manual URL input required. Reach out to our support team to get your migration scoped and scheduled.
Plan: All plans
Demo: Watch demo →
🤖 Astra
Your Astra agent can now handle audio messages
Why this matters
Voice notes are one of the most common message types on WhatsApp. Agents that couldn't process them were silently missing a significant chunk of incoming conversations.
The update
Astra agents now support WhatsApp audio messages — automatically downloaded and transcribed via Astra's internal ASR — so your agent can handle voice notes the same way it handles text, both incoming and outgoing.
Plan: Business
Your voice agent now speaks 9 Indian languages — with natural code-switching
Why this matters
India-market deployments need agents fluent in the language customers are most comfortable in. Coverage of 6 languages was a start — 9 with native code-switching is a step change.
The update
Astra Voice previously supported 6 Indian languages via Sarvam ASR and TTS. This month adds Telugu, Gujarati, and Marathi — bringing total coverage to 9 regional languages, all with native code-switching so agents handle mixed-language conversations naturally.
Plan: All Astra plans
Cantonese and English in the same conversation
Why this matters
Hong Kong users naturally switch between Cantonese and English mid-conversation. An agent that handles only one language at a time breaks the flow.
The update
Astra Voice now handles bilingual Cantonese/English conversations, purpose-built for Hong Kong deployments where code-switching is the norm.
Plan: All Astra plans
Interrupt mid-sentence — the agent actually listens
Why this matters
Rigid turn-taking makes voice agents feel like automated phone menus. Real conversations involve interruptions, and agents that can't handle them lose the user's trust fast.
The update
Astra Voice now handles mid-sentence interruptions gracefully — detecting when a user wants to cut in and yielding the floor instead of talking over them.
Plan: All Astra plans
Cleaner transcripts — no more filler noise
Why this matters
Transcripts cluttered with "haha", heavy breathing, and filler sounds made them hard to use for coaching, audits, or records.
The update
Voice transcription now filters out non-verbal noise and filler sounds, producing clean, readable transcripts that are actually usable downstream.
Plan: All Astra plans
Supervise live AI conversations and step in when it counts
Why this matters
AI handles most conversations well — but when edge cases arise, supervisors need a way to intervene without disrupting the customer experience.
The update
Managers can now monitor AI-handled conversations in real time and take over mid-conversation when needed. Full human-in-the-loop control, without breaking the interaction.
Plan: All Astra plans
Test your web widget agent before it goes live
Why this matters
Deploying a web widget agent without previewing its real behaviour has always been a leap of faith — fonts look different, backgrounds shift, and what looked fine in staging breaks in production.
The update
You can now test your web widget agent in an integrated playground directly inside Astra, with true-to-life UI/UX previews — including optimised default backgrounds and screenshot fallbacks for visual consistency — before it goes live on your site.
Plan: All Astra plans
Demo: Watch demo →
Faster from idea to live agent
Why this matters
The agent creation and deployment flow had unnecessary friction — too many steps between configuring an agent and getting it in front of customers.
The update
A new agent creation flow, widget position controls, and an optimised save-and-deploy button cut the steps from first draft to live deployment. The Wati MCP server now ships official plug-and-play connectors for Slack, HubSpot, and Shopify — less custom code, more out-of-the-box capability from Claude, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible AI tool.
Plan: All Astra plans
Demo:
Graceful handling when a message type isn't supported
Why this matters
When an agent went silent on an unsupported message type — video, document, sticker, location — customers had no idea why. It eroded trust fast.
The update
Astra now responds with a clear, polite fallback whenever an agent receives a message type it can't process — in the user's own language. No more silent drops.
Plan: All Astra plans
