Some tips for chatting with customers:

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Keep your first message short

Start with a short and snappy response like "Hi there, it's James from Yonder," and then keep typing your response. That way you'll hook the person into waiting for you to respond. If you type a long first response, it might take you 2-5 minutes and the website visitor may have bounced off your website in the meantime.

Check the website visitor history

The website visitor history, on the right hand side, is rich with information about where that person has been on your website. It might help give you context in case they've missed out some important details, like which trip, room or product they're referring to.

Send links within chat

If you copy and paste a link into chat, it'll be clickable by the customer on the other end and that makes it easy to direct them to the right place to book online.

Take secure payment through chat

You might find a discussion ends up with the customer wanting to book, and you require payment from them. Don't ask for credit card details through chat as it's not secure. The chat record can't easily be deleted and is therefore accessible to any staff who use Yonder.

You could ask them to call, but they've chosen to use chat because it's more convenient to them. In fact, they may not be able to call if they're overseas or roaming.

Yonder has built a feature that enables you to send a secure payment link inside the chat, eg. send a request to pay $100. Learn more how to use this chat payment feature here.

Some people aren't leaving their contact details

This is very normal. Around 10-20% of chats who don't get the response they wanted, will not leave contact details. This really means they just wanted a response then and there. Your fallback message (when the bot doesn't know the answer) helps manage their expectations: it should make it clear they should leave their email if they want a response. Some Yonder customers have made this message really clear that no-one is monitoring the chat.

Just remember that the large majority of people are getting the answers they need, and go on to book. And there are those that left their email for you to respond later. Overall you're winning - serving more customers and saving time doing it.

Consider using our "Handover to Facebook Messenger" feature, modern travellers increasingly prefer using their messaging apps to chat. Learn more here.

If in doubt, reply

If you don't have any information about the customer, or you think they've left your website by the time you are reading the conversation, we recommend you message back anyway. Our research found 35% of website visitors return later and read that message (we store the conversation on their device so they can continue a conversation later). That means it's a great way to influence website visitors to book.

There’s a little number that pops up on the website chat icon to show the visitor there are new messages waiting for them, and next time they visit your site, they'll see the message you left for them.

You'll be notified of new messages

When a customer messages you back later, you'll get a notification (on your browser, email and mobile app push notification).

If you've "closed" the conversation it will shift back into "open" if the customer responds back later.

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