The First AI ChatBot for Tour Operators: Year 1 Report
After years of hearing our clients grumble about answering the same FAQs over and over again via phone call and email, we decided to take the initiative to create a solution. The result was our proprietary AI ChatBot which now serves as an automated customer service and sales agent for tour operators! The data below and in the case study is aggregated from all live ChatBots, with the first one having been launched in February 2019.
While our ChatBot was new to the tour operator industry in 2019, reports say there are 1.4 billion people currently using chatbots and estimates that a quarter of the world’s population will soon be using chatbots. Our 2019 data supports IBM’s report that chatbots have the ability to answer 80% of standard questions. On average, each Bot received 2,500+ messages from website visitors each month. If you can verbalize a response, we can train a Bot to respond the same way!
The graph below shows the top 5 types of questions the Bots received in 2019, excluding uncategorized questions and those asking to book (a feature we are currently working on developing with reservation systems).
The data shows not only that the Bots are highly effective in answering a large volume and variety of questions, but also that they are quite effective in helping visitors convert on a client’s website. Customers who interacted with our Bot even booked their tours online at a rate 125% higher than all website visitors. Think about customers who call or email with one last question that the Bot can now answer, automatically, day or night! Nashville Pedal Tavern, the first adopter of our AI ChatBot, is a great example of this. Their contact form submissions were down over 50% – that’s 900+ fewer submissions! – over 9 months, while their online revenue was up nearly 20% year over year. If responses to contact forms or phone calls take 5-10 minutes on average, the TOMIS AI ChatBot saved their staff almost 100 hours of valuable time that can be spent on more complex operational, strategic, or sales items. We are adding additional functionality to the sales enablement component of the Bot in 2020, but we were very pleased with its performance in 2019!
Read the TOMIS ChatBot Year 1 Case Study here!
Bot on, folks!
-TOMIS Bot Squad
Download the Case Study Below!
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