
Goélia called on Dydu to deploy a chatbot for its customers on its website. Clara Labrune, Quality & Guest Experience Director, looks back at the implementation of this project and future developments.
Can you describe your company and your role?
Goélia is a family-run vacation resort business founded in 2001. We manage more than 70 3* and 4* resorts in France and market other partner resorts (as a travel agency) in France and abroad (Italy, Spain, and Portugal).
I am currently the Quality & Guest Experience Director. My role is to ensure that our guests are satisfied by:
- carrying out quality control visits and improvements/renovations at our resorts
- continually monitoring our online reputation, including our guests’ feedback before, during, and after their stay
What challenge(s) did you want to address by implementing a bot?
We were getting a lot of customer inquiries via various channels: phone calls, emails, and social media. Most of the requests were simple questions that could have been answered by searching our website. We wanted to provide a simple and easy solution so that we could respond quickly to customer queries and spend more qualitative time on complex information requests.
Why did you choose Dydu?
We conducted market research and met several companies specializing in chatbot creation, including some in tourism. Although none of Dydu’s clients are in tourist accommodation, the solution, price, and good connection with the sales rep convinced us to move forward.
Can you describe your solution?
We’ve implemented a chatbot on our website (B2C) to guide our customers and answer questions to simplify the booking process.
How many people manage the chatbot internally, and what do they do?
4 people manage the chatbot internally:
- Two people from the quality and guest experience department: bot management, knowledge base updates, reading dialogs, and statistics analysis
- One person from the booking office who reads the dialogs and actively responds to any special requests (e.g., invoice requests, booking changes or cancellations, etc.)
- One project manager who informs our website provider of any problems with the chatbot or developments
How did you communicate about your chatbot internally and externally?
Internally, our employees were delighted to hear that we were implementing a chatbot. We asked for their help to test our knowledge articles before launching the bot on our site. They liked to be involved.
Externally, we communicated about this new feature via social media to raise awareness and encourage customers to use it.
How did you build your knowledge base?
We used the FAQ page on our website and spoke to employees from various departments (call center, community manager, resorts) to determine the most frequently asked questions. We then looked at the chatbot dialogs and questions we hadn’t thought of to enrich our knowledge base.
What are the main features you use?
Our chatbot includes various features:
- Top knowledge
- Decision trees for some of our knowledge articles
- A side panel to provide additional information
Which KPIs do you monitor to manage your bot’s activity, and what benefits have you observed since implementing the solution?
We carefully monitor customer requests via phone calls, emails, and social media. The number of queries has decreased:
- up to 83% less direct messages on social media
- up to 45% fewer calls to our call center
The requests are also more qualitative, enabling our call center to spend more time advising customers and helping them book a vacation. Our community manager has been able to take on additional tasks since they are spending less time giving advice.
What are the main benefits for end-users?
Our customers have access to instant answers to simple questions 24/7. Our website user experience and booking process are more seamless. Customers no longer need to wait for someone to answer their email or call to find out when to pay their booking balance or how to connect to their account online, for example. Implementing a chatbot on our website has benefitted our customer satisfaction.
Do you think the project is a success?
The project is a success because it has improved our customer relationship and the quality of work for various teams at our head office.
What developments and updates are you planning to improve the bot and encourage its use?
We’re developing an API to personalize our customer responses even more (resort-specific information) and avoid generic answers.