A new kind of customer is starting to appear, and it is not a person. Google has begun letting its assistant call businesses on a user's behalf in the US, starting with home services, and booking features are spreading across assistants and messaging apps. It is early, and most of it has not reached the Gulf yet, but the direction is clear enough to prepare for.
The useful way to think about it is this. When an assistant is asked to book a dentist or a property viewing, it will favour businesses where the information is clear and the booking is easy to complete.
What an assistant needs from you
An assistant cannot read between the lines the way a person does. If your prices are hidden, your hours are only in an image, or your booking depends on a back-and-forth on the phone, it has little to work with. Clear, structured information is what lets it say yes to you.
- Services listed with plain names, durations and price ranges.
- Opening hours, locations and languages written as text and kept up to date on Google.
- An online booking page that shows real availability, or a WhatsApp flow that offers times.
Simple booking helps people too
None of this is only for machines. Every step you remove from booking also helps the person who is trying to book at 11pm on their phone. A booking flow that takes three taps instead of a phone call wins both kinds of customer.
It is worth testing your own booking from a phone, as if you were a new customer. If you get stuck, an assistant will get stuck too, and it will simply move on to the next business.
Answer the phone, or make it obvious when you will
If assistants are calling on behalf of customers, missed calls cost even more. Make sure calls are answered, or that a missed call triggers a WhatsApp message with booking options. Put your real response times on your site so nobody, human or not, is left guessing.
Do not overreact
Most of your customers will keep booking the way they do today for a while yet. The good news is that preparing for assistants is mostly the same work as fixing your booking for humans. Clear information, simple booking and fast replies pay off either way.
