The full story
And why should you - a busy business owner who has seen a hundred “AI tools” come and go - care about this one?
Fair question. We owe you a straight answer. Grab a drink, this is the full story - no fluff, no corporate speak. Just an honest explanation of what we built, why, and exactly how the money works - including the part most companies hide.
How many customers did you lose last month - not because your product was bad, not because your price was wrong, but simply because nobody replied fast enough?
Think about it. A customer sends you a WhatsApp at 8pm asking about availability. You see it at 7am the next morning. You reply. They've already bought from someone else.
That isn't bad service. That's just… life.
You can't sit on WhatsApp 24 hours a day. You have a business to run, a family to get home to, and a brain that needs sleep. The phone rings during meetings. Messages pile up over the weekend. Monday morning is a firefight.
Here's the part that stings:
A slow reply doesn't feel like a loss. There's no alert for “a customer just gave up on you.” No line in your accounts for the sale that never happened. So it hides.
But the pattern is real, and you already know it from your own behaviour: when youmessage a business and hear nothing back for hours, you move on. Your customers are no different. Speed isn't a nice-to-have - it's often the whole decision.
The painful truth? Most businesses are bleeding revenue they never even see. You can't track the customer who didn't wait - which is exactly why it goes unfixed for years.
That's the first thing everyone suggests. And on paper, it makes sense. Hire a customer service person. Problem solved.
Except…
Salary: K3,000–5,000/month for one person
That's one person. Covering 8 hours. On weekdays only.
Coverage gap: 14 hours a day with nobody responding
6pm to 8am. Weekends. Public holidays. Your busiest sales hours - unattended.
Capacity: One conversation at a time
When 5 customers message at once (which happens), 4 of them wait.
Leave & sickness: Your support literally disappears
No backup. No handover. The WhatsApp just… goes silent.
Training & management: Weeks to onboard, constant oversight
And if they leave? Start from scratch.
“To truly cover WhatsApp around the clock with people, you need three shifts - and that's a payroll most Zambian SMEs simply don't have, before you even count NAPSA, leave, and training. We know, because we asked them.”
Not another chatbot that spits out generic answers. A teammate who happens to never sleep.
First in Queue answers your customers everywhere they reach you - your website, WhatsApp, and the phone - instantly, accurately, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
It's not a replacement for your team. It's the team member who never sleeps, never calls in sick, speaks 40+ languages, and handles as many conversations at once as your customers can throw at it - without ever making one of them wait.
A chat widget on your site, replying in seconds in the customer's language. Free to run, and the fastest way to stop losing the visitor who almost bought.
Orders, enquiries, complaints, booking confirmations. Answered the moment they land, day or night, in the customer's own language.
Inbound calls answered. Outbound follow-ups made. Appointments scheduled. No extra staff, no missed ring.
When something needs a real person, the conversation moves to your team with the full history attached. Nothing lost, nothing repeated.
If the answer isn't in your knowledge base, FiQ says so and hands over. It never invents facts about your business. Your reputation stays intact.
You tell us about your business. We wire up the channels, teach it your answers, and switch it on. You watch it work from one dashboard.
Start on your website - for free
The website chat widget is the easiest place to begin. Paste one line of code, and your site starts answering visitors in seconds. No WhatsApp approval to wait on, no phone number to buy. You can literally have it live before your tea gets cold - and it stays free for as long as you want.
Because “it saves you money” means nothing until you see the numbers side by side.
Cost to start
Cost for the works
Response speed
Conversations at once
Languages
Sick days / leave
Time to go live
Scales with demand
Bottom line
One support agent - covering 8 hours, 5 days - runs you about K4,000 a month. First in Queue answers your website for nothing, and unlocks WhatsApp and voice for K499 - every hour of every day, in every language, with zero sick days. Less money, more coverage, no management headache.
Here's the part most companies bury. We'll put it right in the middle, in plain words.
We run on one honest rule:
Give away what costs us almost nothing. Only charge you for what someone else charges us. Price the big institutions on what it's worth to them.
That's not a slogan - it's the actual maths of running this thing, and it decides every line of the price card below.
Your website chat widget, unlimited conversations, unlimited team members, the dashboard. Each answer costs us about one ngwee, so the first 500 every month are on us - and there's no third party taking a cut.
WhatsApp charges us per message. Phone calls cost real airtime and voice-processing money. We refuse to pretend otherwise - so these run on pay-as-you-go credit you top up like airtime. Use a little, pay a little. Use none, pay nothing.
Banks, ministries and large firms need uptime guarantees, security sign-off, and custom integrations. We price those on what a call centre would've cost them - not on our token bill.
Put it together and the whole price card fits on the back of a napkin:
K0
forever, not a trial
Website chat widget, unlimited conversations, unlimited team seats, 500 answered messages a month, one website. Shows a small “Powered by First in Queue.”
K499/mo
or K4,990/yr - 2 months free
Everything in Free, branding removed, WhatsApp + voice + automated actions unlocked, unlimited websites & agents, 5,000 answered website messages a month.
Let's talk
annual, invoice-friendly
For banks, ministries & large firms: uptime SLA, SSO, audit logs, data residency, a dedicated manager, on-site training, and custom integrations.
Top up like airtime - K-packs, whenever you want, with optional auto-top-up. WhatsApp replies and voice minutes draw down as they're used. And you never have to guess how much you need: once traffic starts, your dashboard tells you in plain words - “at your current rate, K200 lasts about 3 weeks.”
Only two questions to answer on day one: do you want your branding removed, and do you want WhatsApp and voice switched on? That's it. No forecasting how many messages you'll send. No five-tier ladder to decode. Start free, flip on Pro when you're ready, top up credit when you grow.
Everything's in Zambian Kwacha, payable via Airtel Money, MTN Money, Zamtel, or card. No USD exchange-rate surprises. And we will never print the word “unlimited” next to WhatsApp or voice - because those cost real money to deliver, and pretending otherwise is how other tools spring a bill on you later.
No catch. But we'll tell you exactly why we can afford it - because you deserve to know.
Every free widget shows a small “Powered by First in Queue” at the bottom of the chat. That little line is our advertising. When a customer in Lusaka chats with your shop and sees it, then sees it again on another site, and another - that's how the next business hears about us. No cold calls. No billboards.
So serving thousands of small businesses for free isn't charity, and it isn't a loss we're quietly hoping to claw back. It's the cheapest, most honest marketing we have. You get a genuinely free tool. We get seen. Fair trade.
The one honest limit: the free tier covers 500 answered messages a month. Most small sites never come close - but if yours does, it's just a few ngwee per answer after that, and your dashboard shows you the number long before you ever pay it.
Want the badge gone? That's literally what the K499 Pro planis for - remove the branding, and unlock WhatsApp and voice while you're at it.
The honest version
Free-branded for small businesses who'll grow with us. Value-priced for the institutions who need guarantees. Nobody pays for what costs us nothing - and nobody gets surprised by a bill for what does.
Not in features - in outcomes. Because you don't buy software. You buy results.
Every message answered, every call picked up - at 3am, during holidays, on weekends. Your business never sleeps, and you still do.
The customer who messages at 9pm gets an answer before they can switch to your competitor. That's revenue you were quietly losing, saved.
The chat widget turns curious visitors into conversations, and conversations into customers - without you touching your phone.
Routine questions - handled. Repeat enquiries - handled. Your people work on the things that actually grow the business.
Fast, accurate, friendly answers in their own language. That's not just support - that's a reason to come back and tell a friend.
If Pro doesn't help your business within 30 days, you get every kwacha back. One email. No questions.
What a support desk like this would cost you
K9,000–15,000 a month
Your investment: free to start, K499 for the works
That's not a theoretical “value.” It's the actual payroll you're not signing.
Getting started takes almost no effort from you. Seriously.
5 minutes
Your name, what you do, and the questions customers ask most. That's all we need to start.
Minutes
Drop one line of code on your site and the chat widget is answering visitors. Want WhatsApp and voice too? We set those up over the next day or two.
From day one
Support runs around the clock. You monitor everything from one dashboard. We handle the maintenance.
No coding required - one line of code, and we'll even paste it for you
No technical skills needed - we do the setup
No hiring, no training, no managing staff
No foreign currency - everything in ZMW
No contract lock-in - cancel anytime
First in Queue is built by Codarti, a Zambian technology company based in Lusaka. We build software for African businesses, and we built FiQ for the market we actually live and work in.
We didn't build it because AI is trendy. We built it because we watched good businesses - clinics, restaurants, shops, agencies - lose customers to a problem that finally has a real solution.
We use FiQ ourselves. Our own customer support runs on it. We eat our own cooking - so if something breaks, we feel it before you do.
And when you message our support? You get a response in seconds. Because that's the whole point.
The website widget is already free - so this is about Pro. Turn on WhatsApp and voice, use FiQ on your real business for a full 30 days. If you genuinely feel it didn't help - any reason at all - send one email to support@codarti.com. Full refund. No questions. No forms.
We can offer this because we'd rather earn your business than trap it. If it's not helping, you shouldn't be paying - simple as that.
It costs nothing to put it on your website today. So the question is: how many more customers are you willing to lose to slow responses while you think about it?
Every day without instant responses is another day of leaked revenue. Another customer who messaged at 8pm and bought from someone else by morning.
You've worked too hard on your business to lose customers to something this fixable - and this cheap to fix.
Start today
Start free in minutes, or book a demo and we'll build it around your industry, your questions, your actual use case. In 15 minutes you'll see exactly how it works.