Live in Production
2024
Event organisers managing hundreds of registrations face a painful manual process: attendees send WhatsApp messages, the organiser replies with bank details, attendees send payment screenshots, the organiser manually checks each one, updates a spreadsheet, assigns a seat or bus route, and sends a confirmation — all while handling dozens of simultaneous conversations.
The process doesn't scale. During peak registration windows, response times stretch to hours, attendees drop off, and double-bookings happen when two people are assigned the same seat because the spreadsheet wasn't updated fast enough.
Event reminders, if they happened at all, were manual blasts sent the night before rather than a structured sequence that actually reduces no-show rates.
I built a fully automated registration pipeline that lives entirely in WhatsApp — the channel attendees are already using. The system handles hundreds of concurrent registrations simultaneously, with GPT-4o Vision verifying payment screenshots in seconds and Airtable enforcing atomic seat reservations to prevent double-booking.
Event organisers upload the event flyer to the system. GPT-4o Vision extracts structured event details — date, venue, ticket price, bus routes, and capacity — and writes them directly to Airtable. This single step eliminates all manual data entry when setting up a new event.
When an attendee messages the WhatsApp number, the system initiates a guided 5-message registration conversation: greeting and event confirmation, full name, contact number, preferred bus route or arrival method, and a summary with bank payment details. Responses are stored in Airtable as the conversation progresses.
The attendee sends a payment screenshot via WhatsApp. Rather than queuing for manual review, GPT-4o Vision analyses the image in seconds — extracting the transfer amount and comparing it against the expected ticket price. Correct payments advance to seat assignment immediately. Incorrect amounts trigger a polite follow-up message with the correct figure.
Verified payments trigger an atomic seat reservation in Airtable — the seat or bus slot is marked as taken in a single operation that prevents any concurrent registration from claiming the same spot. The system handles hundreds of simultaneous registrations without race conditions.
The attendee receives a WhatsApp confirmation with their seat number, event details, and venue information. Three scheduled reminders fire automatically: a logistics summary 3 days before, a final reminder 1 day before, and a morning-of message with venue address and start time. No-show rates drop without any additional organiser effort.