Start with your primary job-to-be-done
Vendor selection goes wrong when teams buy for features they will never use. List your top three WhatsApp outcomes: broadcast marketing, shared inbox for agents, ecommerce catalog flows, appointment booking, or accurate FAQ deflection from internal documents. Rank them; the vendor should be best-in-class on number one, not average on five.
Indian businesses face extra constraints: Meta template approval timelines, Hindi-English mixed queries, GST-aware invoicing expectations, and vendors who disappear after sale. Shortlist only providers with documented India customer references in your industry vertical — gyms, clinics, and salons have different peak patterns than D2C fashion brands.
Non-negotiable evaluation criteria
Test knowledge accuracy, not demo polish. Upload your actual price PDF and ask twenty real customer questions; note wrong answers, missing citations, and handoff behavior. Ask how updates propagate when you change a document — same-day or ticket-based?
Check human handoff: pause AI, assign threads, and resume without losing history. Confirm WhatsApp Business API or Cloud API compatibility with your current number strategy. Insist on a time-boxed trial with your data; Sabrixa offers this because grounded bots only prove value on your files, not a canned sandbox.
Red flags and a short shortlist strategy
Avoid vendors that cannot explain retrieval sources, lock you into annual contracts before a pilot, or treat WhatsApp as a secondary channel behind email tickets. Be wary of “unlimited AI” pricing with no usage transparency — costs often migrate to professional services.
Run a two-week bake-off with at most two finalists. Measure response latency, accuracy on policy questions, and lead capture completeness. For document-heavy local use cases, Sabrixa belongs on that shortlist alongside campaign-first tools you may keep for ads — choose the vendor that wins your scored sheet, not the one with the loudest ads.