You may have noticed that more and more hotels are jumping on the chatbot train to help lock in direct bookings.

In our ultra-connected society of instant-everything, it’s almost expected nowadays that assistance and answers to your site visitors’ questions will be right at their fingertips. But it can be tough to make the leap, especially if you don’t know exactly how it’ll work on your website. We hear you, and it’s totally natural and okay to have doubts. Let’s just roll up our sleeves and knock ’em out! In addition to some answers to common questions, we’ve even got a sweet demo for you to check out! As they say, seeing is believing…

What if the chatbot gets in the way?

We’ve probably all experienced walking into a store and being hounded by well-meaning associates asking if we need help finding anything and then hovering in case we change our minds. No bueno. Chatbot doesn’t do that! When the website first loads, the chatbot delivers a warm, welcoming message from the corner of the page, just to let your visitor know it’s there. Then, it tucks away unobtrusively, allowing the visitor to browse the site as they like uninterrupted. Still, it’s easily accessible if the visitor decides that he or she needs help later on.

Will a chatbot actually be able to answer all of my visitors’ questions?

Most likely! Chatbots are remarkably adept at handling your site visitors’ questions because they get all of their information from you — the expert. Your chatbot provider will help you set up lots of keyword-rich descriptions of your accommodations and services — basically, pre-loading the answers that your chatbot will give to visitors. The bot looks for keywords in each visitor’s inquiry, selects possible answers that have those same keywords, and lets them choose which answer is most helpful to them. Very convenient!

But what if the chatbot doesn’t have the answer to someone’s question?

No worries! You and your team can step in to help. If the bot isn’t successful in answering the question, it will give the visitor the option to chat with a live person. And the handoff is oh so smooth! It all happens within the same chat window with little to no interruption. You and your team will receive the chat request along with the full conversation the visitor has already had with the bot, so you’ll be armed with the whole picture for maximum problem-solving. From there, you can answer the visitor’s question personally, provide links to the site pages they need, and even guide them through the booking process.

What if I don’t have someone available to step in?

If you or your team aren’t available, the bot will simply forward the visitor’s question to you via email to answer when you can — which is what the visitor might’ve done anyway if the chatbot wasn’t available, so no harm, no foul. But odds are that visitors will be more likely to actually send you their questions as a natural progression from trying with the bot first, rather than giving up and leaving your site in frustration of not being able to find what they need. So in that way, the chatbot can be preeetty great at warming up your audience for you!

Ready to see it in action?

Curtiss has put together a little video demo for you! This is a great, bite-sized introduction to what you can expect to see in a live chat situation.

Nice, eh? If you’re curious about getting a chatbot of your very own, we can help!