this one is for whoever runs the counter at a bike or kayak rental on a summer weekend.
if your phone rings all saturday, it's mostly the same few questions. how much for a day, what time you open, whether helmets are included, how to book for sunday. you answer them between handing out bikes.
a retune bot answers those from your website. you point it at your pages, it reads them, and it answers from what's there. if you haven't done that part, train it on your whole site first.
this letter is about a row of buttons for those questions. people tap instead of type, and one button opens your booking page.
the shop in the video is harbor lane, a bike rental. i made it up to show the feature. the click counts at the end come from a different made-up shop, a bakery. they're only there to show what the tab counts.
a visitor opens the chat on their phone. before they type anything, they see your buttons, like "day rates" and "opening hours".
they tap one and get the answer. under it, the bot suggests two to four things to ask next, like whether there's a weekly rate. they can keep tapping without typing.
one button can open a link instead of asking a question. point it at your booking page and it opens in a new tab. the booking itself still happens in the system you use now.
if you'd rather have people pick a time inside the chat, there's also booking in the chat. it uses its own calendar, so it doesn't sync with another booking system.
quick replies were built in a copy of retune, so they aren't switched on for new accounts by themselves. sign up, then email me at olive@reframe.so and say you want quick replies on your bot. once they're on, a quick replies tab shows up.
a bot holds up to eight buttons. each one sends its own label as the question, so write it the way a customer would ask. you can come back and rename, reorder or delete them later. there's more on each step in the quick reply buttons page.
the tab counts the taps on each button, all time and for the last 30 days. it also shows how many follow-ups got tapped out of how many were shown. after one weekend you can see whether people go for prices or for the booking page, and move the busy one to the top.
it fits a rental shop or a tour where the same handful of questions come in all season. if most people want to talk a group trip through with you, buttons won't save you much. keep the phone number on your site for those.
the buttons only show in the chat on your website. if people reach your bot on whatsapp or telegram, they get plain text answers there.
follow-ups take a few seconds to show up after each answer, and the visitor can't type until they do. if that bothers you, leave follow-ups off and keep the starter buttons.
if your bot asks for a name and email first, the buttons wait until that's done. for each tap, retune keeps which button it was, in which chat and when.
the buttons don't change what the bot knows. if your prices change, update the page the bot reads.
questions the bot couldn't answer land in an inbox, and you write the answer once. you can also keep a list of questions it has to get right, like your day rate, and run them before you publish.
if something your shop needs is missing, email me and tell me what it is.
olive