---
title: "ReplyDesk — WhatsApp lead agent | Harshith Nayaka L"
description: "WhatsApp lead agent answering every inbound message in about eight seconds, with a live dashboard for the lead feed, pipeline and response-time KPIs."
canonical: "https://harshith-nayaka-l-portfolio.vercel.app/work/replydesk"
last-updated: "2026-08-22T04:29:48Z"
author: "Harshith Nayaka L"
content-type: "text/markdown"
html-version: "https://harshith-nayaka-l-portfolio.vercel.app/work/replydesk"
---
# ReplyDesk — WhatsApp lead agent

> Answer every inbound WhatsApp lead in seconds, automatically, with a live operations dashboard for the lead feed, pipeline, and response times.

Case study by Harshith Nayaka L, AI Engineer (Full-Stack), Bengaluru, India.
Canonical page: https://harshith-nayaka-l-portfolio.vercel.app/work/replydesk

- **Type:** Lead-response agent + dashboard
- **Focus:** Speed-to-lead
- **Role:** Solo build
- **Status:** Interactive prototype

## The problem

78% of customers buy from the business that responds first, yet the average small business takes around 29 hours to reply to a lead. By then the customer has already bought from someone faster.

The gap isn't intent, it's operations. Leads arrive on WhatsApp at all hours, a human can't sit on the inbox 24/7, and every minute of delay is measurable lost revenue.

## What I built

ReplyDesk is a WhatsApp lead agent that captures every inbound message and fires a first reply in roughly eight seconds, so no lead sits waiting. Around it sits a live operations dashboard, the piece that makes the automation legible to the person running it.

The dashboard is the control room: a real-time lead feed, a pipeline breakdown of where each lead sits, a 'needs your attention' queue that surfaces the ones a human should actually touch, and response-time KPIs that keep the whole thing honest against that first-responder metric.

It's a self-contained, interactive front-end prototype, you can simulate an incoming lead and watch it flow through capture, reply, and pipeline in real time, built to prove the interaction model and the operational value, not to be a finished SaaS.

## Pipeline

- **Inbound:** WhatsApp message (A new lead arrives)
- **Capture:** Into the lead feed (Logged in real time)
- **Respond:** Agent first reply (~8s, every time)
- **Qualify:** Score & route (Hot / warm / needs attention)
- **Operate:** Live dashboard (Feed, pipeline, KPIs)

## The judgment calls

**Speed is the entire product**

The whole system is organized around one number: time to first reply. Answering in seconds instead of hours is the difference between winning the lead and losing it, so that metric sits front and center on the dashboard.

**A dashboard that shows the pipeline, not just a chat log**

Leads are broken down by stage so the operator can see the shape of the funnel at a glance, how many are hot, how many are cooling, where things are stuck, rather than scrolling an undifferentiated inbox.

**Automation that still asks for a human when it matters**

A 'needs your attention' queue pulls out the leads that genuinely require a person, so automation handles the volume while the operator spends their time only where it moves the needle.

**Built to be felt, not just described**

The prototype lets you simulate an incoming lead and watch it move through the system live, so the speed-to-lead value is something you experience in the interface rather than a claim in a slide.

## What it changed

**What it proves:** Product sense around a real, quantified business problem: turning the 'respond first' statistic into an operational tool, and designing the dashboard an operator would actually run their day from.

**Honest scope:** This is a self-contained interactive front-end prototype with a simulate-lead demo, not a WhatsApp-connected production deployment. It's proof of the interaction and operations model, and it's honest about being exactly that.

## Built with

WhatsApp (lead channel), LLM agent, Real-time dashboard, Vanilla JavaScript, HTML / CSS

## Links

- [View on GitHub](https://github.com/HarshithNayakaL/Whatsapp-Agent-Dashboard)