A WhatsApp assistant answers an academy's parents at any hour
The business
AKUMAYA is an academy that teaches programming, robotics, 3D design and AI to kids aged 7 to 15, almost all of it in live online classes. It is not an external client: it is one of my own projects. The person who writes to the academy is almost never the student, but their father or mother, and they almost always do it over WhatsApp.
Pablo is the assistant that handles that WhatsApp. It is part of the platform the academy is run on, which I cover separately: the education CRM.
The problem
- Parents write when they can: at night, on the weekend, in the middle of a class. If nobody answers at that moment, many of them don't ask again.
- Almost all of them ask the same things: which course suits a kid of that age, how much it costs, which days are available, how to pay.
- Before recommending a course you need to know the child's age, where they live and whether they have done any programming before. Those are three questions someone on the team repeated in every conversation.
- The team is small. Every stretch of time spent answering the same thing over WhatsApp is time not spent on the classes.
What I built
It answers and guides at any hour
Pablo replies on the academy's WhatsApp with a defined personality, not with a menu of options. It asks what it needs to —age, city, prior experience— and uses that to recommend the right course. If the parent wants the details, it sends them the course syllabus as a PDF.
It understands voice notes
Many parents prefer to send an audio message. Pablo transcribes it and answers just as if they had typed it.
It walks parents through payment, but doesn't sign off on it
It explains how to pay, receives the proof of payment in the same chat and records it in the family's file. The one who checks that the payment has arrived is a person on the team; once they confirm it, Pablo sends the enrollment form.
It knows when to hand the conversation to a person
If the parent asks for it, Pablo escalates. And anyone on the team can take over a conversation at any time and hand it back afterward, without losing anything that was said.
Waitlist and absences
When a group is full, it puts the family on the waitlist. And when a teacher reports that a kid didn't show up for class, Pablo is the one who writes to the family.
It also works for the team
The academy's staff ask it questions over the same WhatsApp and it answers with the platform's data, without them having to open the panel.
Everything is measured
Conversations per day, how many end up in a person's hands and at what point in the journey each family stops. That is what makes it possible to fix it with data and not by gut feeling.
The result
- In use with real parents since August 26, 2026. It is not a demo: it is the WhatsApp of a working academy.
- 217 conversations handled as of October 3, 2026.
- The usual questions get answered on their own, at whatever hour, and the team steps in when a person is needed.
- Every conversation stays linked to the family's file in the platform: who asked, about which course and how it ended.
- The money still goes through a person. Pablo prepares and walks them through it; the payment is verified by the team.
What I needed from the team
- The content: course catalog, prices, schedules and the tone the academy uses with families. That is where Pablo's personality comes from.
- A person to verify payments and handle the conversations Pablo escalates.
- Reviewing real conversations in the first few weeks to fix what it wasn't answering well.
- Nothing from the parents: they write over WhatsApp as always, without installing or signing up for anything.
