Help a traveller reach a useful next step
A visitor wants a trip that fits their dates, departure point, budget and preferences. The assistant’s first job is to collect those requirements without making the visitor repeat them. It can then retrieve relevant product information or pass a clear brief to a travel adviser.
For this design, the adviser receives the requirements already supplied, unresolved questions and the source references used. A request to speak to a person should reach that handoff directly. A lead score should not prevent a customer from getting help.
Separate reference information from a live quote
Retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG, gives the model selected reference material to use when answering. It can help locate a cancellation policy or describe a package. It does not guarantee that every answer is true, and a high retrieval score is not a probability that a price is correct.
Get price and availability from the authorised supplier or booking system. Display validated quote fields through application logic: amount, currency, applicable taxes and fees, inclusions, conditions and the time checked. Do not ask a model to fill in missing charges or invent an alternative when the supplier is unavailable.
| Customer question | Source and response |
|---|---|
| What does the package include? | Current approved product material, with conflicting or missing details referred for review. |
| What will this trip cost? | A validated supplier quote showing its conditions and freshness. |
| Is the room still available? | The booking source, checked again at the relevant booking step. |
| What entry documents do I need? | Current official destination guidance and qualified assistance where needed. Avoid a general assurance that a traveller is eligible. |
Make uncertainty visible in the conversation
A quote can expire or change between a chat and a booking. Define freshness rules with the supplier and process owner, and show the customer when a recheck is needed. If no verified quote is available, say so and offer an adviser handoff. A cached answer should never look like a new supplier confirmation.
Keep conversation state explicit: requirements collected, information requested, quote pending, adviser requested and handoff completed. The visitor should know whether a person has actually received the request. If a transfer fails, retain a recoverable request and show a truthful status.
Pass along only what the adviser needs
Use role-appropriate access to the brief and any retained transcript. Do not broadcast full customer conversations into a general chat channel. Agree retention and deletion behaviour, and distinguish responding to the enquiry from enrolling someone in future marketing.
Customer messages and retrieved pages may contain instructions aimed at the model. They must not change supplier access, contact destinations or booking permissions. Keep booking and payment actions outside this initial enquiry workflow.
Test the difficult conversations before launch
- A supplier quote expires while the traveller is choosing an option.
- The supplier is unavailable, or two approved documents disagree.
- The traveller changes dates or currency after receiving information.
- The customer requests a human before completing all questions.
- A repeated handoff event must not create several adviser tasks.
- A document or message asks the assistant to reveal another customer’s information.
Have advisers judge factual accuracy, missing requirements, correction effort and whether the handoff is usable. Track each type of failure separately. A pilot needs evidence of these behaviours before making claims about conversion, speed or fewer escalations.
Plan a customer portal or enquiry journey
Discuss a similar workflow
Bring a description of the process, the systems involved and one example of where work gets stuck. We can use discovery to establish the requirements, dependencies and next step before preparing a solution and estimate. Please leave private customer, applicant and patient records out of the website enquiry.