Decide what can be answered routinely
Customers often ask about opening hours, the work you offer or how to request an appointment while the team is busy. These questions are a useful starting point for website enquiry handling. The aim is a clear next step, whether that is an answer, a request for details or a human response.
Write down which questions are routine and which require judgement. Prices that depend on an inspection, unusual work, complaints and changes to agreed terms should reach the responsible person. Written website chat does not include telephone answering or permission to negotiate.
Give answers a maintained source
Review the information the assistant may use: services, coverage, contact details and booking instructions. Remove outdated offers and contradictory pages. A connected website is a source of material, but someone still needs to check that the content reflects what the business currently does.
Try realistic questions, including ones the information cannot answer. A useful response acknowledges what is missing and offers a hand-off. AI can make mistakes, so review conversations and correct the source when an answer exposes an error; do not only edit that one reply.
Collect enough context to act
Ask for the details needed for a response rather than an exhaustive form. Depending on the work, that may be a name, contact method, short description and suitable time to reach the customer. Explain the next step instead of claiming someone has already committed to a deadline.
Keep the original conversation with the captured enquiry. Check for an existing customer before creating disconnected records. A colleague should be able to see what was asked, what was answered and what still needs a decision, without asking the customer to repeat the whole story.
Treat booking as a separate configured step
Booking depends on the package, a working calendar connection and the availability you configure. Confirm which appointment types can be offered and who owns the calendar. An enquiry about a date is not automatically a confirmed booking; use the actual recorded status.
Test unavailable times and a broken connection as well as the successful path. If the booking cannot be completed, give the team the requested time and contact details for review. Do not promise live availability or hide a failed connection behind a success message.
Make the hand-off belong to someone
Give each unresolved enquiry a responsible person, a concrete next task and a due time that the team can meet. “Follow up” is less useful than “Call to clarify access before preparing the offer.” Notifications can alert someone, but an alert alone does not mean the task was completed.
Close the loop by recording the response or decision. Look for enquiries without an owner, missing context and repeated unanswered questions. That review helps improve the process. It does not justify a claim that every captured contact became a qualified opportunity or a sale.
Before you start
Before activation: review the knowledge, test missing answers and calendar failures, and agree who handles the next task.
