Companion & communication

Reservation & inquiry router

Friday evening, service in full swing, the phone rings: a table reservation for next week. The call before was a wedding inquiry, the one before that a question about holiday opening hours. Three completely different concerns – one overloaded channel.

Inquiry router / offer finder

01Intro

The router sorts these concerns before they reach the phone: table, room, group, event or quick question – two questions on the website, and every guest is at the right next step. The plannable reservation goes straight into the booking tool, the event inquiry brings the date and party size along right away, the last-minute request gets the phone (where the team can see spare seats that would long be gone online). For you that means: fewer calls that are really a reservation, fewer event emails missing half the information – and a service that serves guests in the evening instead of playing switchboard.

The router is the guide BEFORE the inquiry – it replaces neither a reservation system nor event advice. Fully preparing an event inquiry for the team is a building block of its own (the event inquiry qualifier); together they're strong, each on its own works too.

02Demo

simulation · fictional inn

You're a visitor to the website of the “Zur Linde” inn. Instead of one contact form for everything: two questions. Try different paths through.

No magic: behind it is a switch – questions with clear branches. That's exactly why Tier 1 is so reliable: no AI that could guess. Only when visitors are meant to phrase things freely (Tier 2) does a language model classify the entry point – the switches stay.

Play a path through in the “try it out” tab – it lights up here.

03How it works

  1. 01

    Sort out your paths

    What actually reaches you – tables, rooms, groups, events, small questions? Which paths exist for them today, and where do concerns land wrong? Out of that comes the map the router guides on.

  2. 02

    Find the questions that really separate

    Usually two are enough: what's it about, and when or how many? Phrased the way guests speak ("we're 25 people looking for something for Juli's birthday") – not the way a form thinks.

  3. 03

    Build the flow and embed it

    The router becomes part of your website – as a guided flow in the design of the house, not as a foreign widget. At the points where guests arrive: home page, menu, event page.

  4. 04

    Wire up the endings

    Every outcome leads somewhere: booking tool, group short form, event callback, phone or WhatsApp. No path ends in nothing – and no guest lands in the contact form for everything.

  5. 05

    Watch and sharpen

    After a few weeks it shows where guests drop out or turn off differently than expected. Then we adjust questions and paths – the router gets better with real guests.

04Stages

The router is one of the most rewarding entry points there is: Tier 1 works entirely without AI and relieves phone and service right away.

Tier 1

Entry: the guided path

A rule-based flow with fixed questions and clear switches: table, group, event, question. Reliable, quickly built, immediately measurable.

Tier 2

Extended: it understands free text

Guests can just start writing – an AI places the concern and joins the flow at the right point. The switches behind it stay rule-based.

Tier 3

Full build: deeply wired

The router hands straight to the reservation system and event process, adapts the website to the concern and shows you a read-out of what guests really look for.

05Technical implementation

  • The router lives in your website – no external widget window, no foreign branding.
  • Tier 1 is a decision tree: fixed questions, fixed switches. Unspectacular and that's exactly why it's reliable – even in the Christmas rush.
  • From Tier 2 a language model helps at the entry: it places freely worded concerns – the switches behind it stay rule-based and predictable.
  • The data model behind it: rooms, capacities, inquiry paths and criteria as a clean structure – the same foundation an FAQ assistant or knowledge catalog later builds on.
  • Handovers as needed: reservation tool (e.g. OpenTable, resmio), email, event form – or honestly the phone, where that's the fastest way.
  • Built in your website's stack; Tier 2 adds a small back end.

for context · This shows how something like this usually gets built – not how it has to be built for you. What actually fits is worked out in the project: around your existing setup, your team, and what stays easy to maintain.

06Related building blocks

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