There I was — on the stage, in Russia — about to begin my talk. The bright lights created a spotlight as close to 700 people in the audience gazed upwards in my direction.
Back-stage I’d had make up applied — supposedly for the cameras — but I’m sure it was to cover up the fact that I looked slightly like a zombie…
Less than a day earlier — back in Amsterdam — I wasn’t sure if I’d even make it to Russia for the talk I was supposed to be giving.
There’d been a delay in getting my travel visa processed. I’d had to cancel my original flight and rebook an alternative one for later that same day. All without really knowing when (or if) the visa would arrive. …
At Booking.com, we’ve put a lot of work into improving how guests and properties communicate through our products. Guests have been able to directly contact a few select properties through our platform for some time. But with over a million property partners on our platform, a select few was not enough for us.
So over the past year, we’ve been working on a pilot version of a new chatbot — something we call the Booking Assistant — to allow our customers to get fast and relevant answers to any questions they have about their bookings.
Guests can still directly message properties. But now instead of sending properties every message, for a small group of English-language bookings participating in the pilot, the bot can simply look up information we have stored and respond instantly. We only send properties the questions we can’t answer for them. This leaves our partners to handle real guest issues, whilst we take care of the rest. …
At Booking.com, we’re pretty well known for our A/B testing and guest-facing platforms, helping millions of people each day to find and book their dream stays, wherever they go in the world.
Behind the scenes, however, we’re also designing for a completely different type of user. A user that’s entrepreneurial and diverse. A user without whom Booking.com couldn’t exist.
This article will explore how we design for our property partners. …
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