What Is Akia’s AI Agent Feature?
Train Akia to help answer guest messages in your inbox, allowing your team to focus on important tasks and only be notified when Akia is unable to respond.
Akia works on the SMS, WhatsApp, Email, Airbnb, and Web Chat platforms, and is a great way to reduce your response time and answer repeat questions.
How Do I Set Up Akia?
Knowledge Base
This is information Akia will refer to when formulating its answer to a guest. Think of it as the internal knowledge base (Google) she will leverage/search through when a guest messages in.
🤓 Akia automatically looks at the data from your PMS to determine how to answer guests. If the data is in your PMS/custom field you have created in Akia, you do not need to create a reference for it, she already knows that information.
Set up different categories for easier distinction, and within a category you can have different sections outlining sub categories for Akia to learn from.
To Create a New Knowledge Base Category and Section:
- Click the + on the left hand table to add a new category and name it
- We recommend grouping similar categories together for easier readability for staff (e.g. Pre Arrival, Nearby Attractions, Things to Do, Restaurants)
- You’ll then be prompted to name the sub-section - here is where you can begin typing the reference material Akia will learn from
- If you have a category for Pre Arrival, add information related to parking, directions, door code as examples
- More is better, so add as much information as you can think of for Akia to leverage
- Akia can process message tokens in the content, so if you already have the information stored as a custom field or custom attribute, input it
Expand this section to view example sub-categories under a “Property” category
Address / Property Location
Check In and Check out Time
Parking / Parking Information
Pet Policy / Pet Friendliness
WiFi / Internet Access
Door Code / Access
Airport Shuttle
Food Options / Restaurant Recommendations / Restaurant Reservation / Room Service
Early Check-in Policy / Late Checkout Policy
Local Attractions
Gym / Fitness Center
Loyalty Program
Thermostat / Air Conditioner / Heater
Available Amenities
- Continue adding more categories and sub-categories as needed if you find the agent is struggling to answer some guest questions.
Example Knowledge Base Category & Guest Example: Pets
Let’s test this out with a Pets category! We’ve created a new knowledge base section with the name Pets and added our pet policy, pet friendly units, and dog friendly parks as sub-categories. That way, Akia can answer more follow up questions.
When a guest messages in about Pets, Akia will handle the conversation until a guest asks something it can’t handle (in this case booking a reservation).
Skills
Think of skills as behavior Akia should abide by when a guest’s message comes in. Unlike the knowledge base which Akia uses to formulate its response, skills determine her standard operating procedure. This is also where you can tailor Akia’s speaking style/tone of voice.
By default you can see Akia’s general skills in the All Accounts tab. This is shared information across your multiple properties (if applicable), but you can also toggle to your particular account (office) to specify property-specific skills (e.g. if one of your properties operates more like a traditional hotel while the other is contactless).
To modify the skills, click the + in the top right corner to begin your draft and after you’re done, click the checkmark in the top right corner to save.
Here are some examples of skills:
- Always notify staff if a guest reports an issue in their room
- If a guest messages in "Confirm upgrade," notify staff immediately and do not respond
- When the guest replies “Checkout,” send this message to the guest and escalate the message to the team.
Some common phrases you can use in your skills are:
- Open ticket/notify staff/escalate conversation - The agent will understand to re-open the guest’s conversation with a red dot in the inbox for your team to be notified
- Create task for ___ - The agent will direct the task to the specified department/user
- Don’t respond - The agent will not respond to the guest (you will need to prompt the agent to open ticket/notify/etc if you don’t want it to respond but still be notified)
Permissions
Configure Akia’s agent mode and what permissions she has when messaging guests.
Off: Akia will not try and answer/handle these types of requests and will always notify your team.
Supervised: Akia will suggest a message with her intended response for your team to accept, edit, or reject - no message, task, or other action will automatically take place.
Managing supervised messages
When a guest messages in, you will see a suggested message box if Akia was able to formulate a response to the guest:
You have four options based on the suggested message:
- Click the circular arrow icon to accept the agent’s message and immediately send it to the guest
- Click the pencil icon to edit the agent’s message before sending it
- When you edit the agent’s message, you will be connected to the chat
Once you send the message to the guest, Akia will indicate a staff member edited the agent’s suggested message:
- Click the x to reject the suggested message and dismiss it from the chat. Your team would then have to open the chat and respond to the guest.
- Ignore the suggested message and open the chat to respond to the guest
Conditional: Depending on conditions set by your team, Akia can have a different mode. For example, after certain times Akia can be in Agentic mode but during office hours she’s in Supervised mode.
Example Conditional Mode Settings (Off Hours & Web Chat)
In conditional mode, you can define situations where Akia’s agent mode and capabilities would be different. Click the + to add a new condition rule.
Step-by-step setup
Agent should automatically respond to guests outside of office hours
Ensure guests are immediately assisted after your team leaves for the day by having the agent automatically respond to guests during off hours. You will still be notified if the agent is unable to fully assist with the guest.
- Click the + button at the bottom of the Agent Mode list to create a new rule
- Give a name for the rule
- Select what times of the day the agent should be active
- Depending on your team’s schedule, you may need to create multiple rules if you are available multiple times per day
- Optionally add conditions
- In House = true - the agent will only respond to guests who are arriving, in-house, or departing on that day and all other guests will be responded to when your team comes back
- Owner / VIP is False - prevent the agent from responding to owners or vips
- Set the agent mode to Agentic - this will mean the agent will automatically respond to guests during the designated time slots and conditions
- Optionally configure additional agent capabilities to be Off / Supervised / Agentic based on what your property is leveraging
- We are moving Devices and Review Management to Agentic so if a guest has issues with their Akia keycode after hours or rates their stay, the agent can immediately assist or provide the review link
Agent should always respond to Web Chat visitors
Do you have our Web Chat added to your website? The agent can automatically respond to guests messaging on these platforms so you don’t miss a guest looking to book .
- Click the + button at the bottom of the Agent Mode list to create a new rule
- Give a name for the rule
- Select what times of the day the agent should be active
- This can be all day for every day of the week, or if you have a guest services/front desk employee attending the Akia chat during office hours, you can make this timing more granular
- Add conditions for the messaging platform with Platform
- Platform equals Web Chat in this scenario - if you wanted to add more platforms as options, you can change it to Platform in ____
- Set the agent mode to Agentic - this will mean the agent will automatically respond to guests during the designated time slots for the specified platforms using the references and instructions
- Optionally configure additional agent capabilities to be Off / Supervised / Agentic based on what your property is leveraging
- We are setting Booking capabilities to agentic so Akia can help answer the visitor’s questions and encourage them to book a stay.
- We are keeping the additional capabilities in Supervised mode because web chat visitors should not be asking for reservation-specific information nor should the agent automatically provide a new key code, review link, etc.
Agentic: Akia will always try and respond to the guest/leverage the available capability. Only when she is unable to handle the conversation would she notify your team to intervene.
Tasks
The agent will refer to the items you designate in this section to automatically create tasks for your staff members. If an item is not defined here, the agent will not automatically create the task and instead notify your team to respond/manually create the task.
We recommend phrasing the items in a Verb Noun format (Bring ___, Deliver ___, Investigate ___) so the agent is better suited to handle different ways guests might message in. (A task for bringing crib is different than fixing a crib.) The agent does have a concept of synonyms, so “Sheets” would be considered the same as “Linens,” but you can also specify each item individually if there’s specific nuances.
When you create a task item, you can either have the agent auto assign the task to a queue/department based on the nature of the task, or directly specify which queue/department the task should be created for.
Learn more about Tasks here: Create and Manage Tasks
What Is Supervised Mode vs Agentic Mode?
By default, your agent will be in a supervised mode. This means the agent will not automatically respond to guests but it will suggest the message it would’ve sent to the guest. This is a great way to evaluate your agent’s training and tone of voice to make sure it’s behaving correctly and referencing the correct information before you switch it to the standard mode where the agent will automatically respond to guests if it’s able to.
When a guest messages in, you will see a suggested message box if Akia was able to formulate a response to the guest:
You have four options based on the suggested message:
- Click the circular arrow icon to accept the agent’s message and immediately send it to the guest
- Click the pencil icon to edit the agent’s message before sending it
- When you edit the agent’s message, you will be connected to the chat
Once you send the message to the guest, Akia will indicate a staff member edited the agent’s suggested message:
- Click the x to reject the suggested message and dismiss it from the chat. Your team would then have to open the chat and respond to the guest.
- Ignore the suggested message and open the chat to respond to the guest
Use the AI Agent to Facilitate Bookings
Your AI Agent can help direct guests to book on your booking engine by providing them options based on their desired dates and party size. This works if guests text or email in, but it’s an even better experience if you use our Web Chat feature on your website.
Add Akia’s Web Chat feature to your website: Web Chat
To set this up, go to your property configuration settings page (Admins or Super Admins only) and paste in your booking link from your website - the URL when the available rooms are shown to website visitors. Akia will automatically try and parse the URL into a dynamic link so the agent can provide the correct redirect link based on the guest’s filters.
Remember to Save Changes at the bottom of the page, and try messaging in via web chat or texting your property number asking to book a stay!
To add photos to the rooms being offered in web chat, that would be set up in your Room Types page (Hotel) where you can upload a photo for each room type, or Listings page (Vacation Rental) where you can upload an image per listing.
FAQs
- Can Akia respond to guests who are not currently on property or do not have a reservation?
- Yes! Akia can respond to all messages regardless of platform.
- Is each guest conversation unique? Is there a risk of Akia responding to one guest (John Doe) based on the conversation with another guest (Jane Smith)?
- All guest conversations are unique, Akia will only respond based on what was discussed in each individual conversation.
- When will Akia try and respond to guests?
- Akia will try and respond to any unattended conversation, meaning as long as no user is connected to the chat, she will try and respond if it’s able to. If Akia has already opened up a ticket (meaning she could not answer the guest herself) and the guest asks follow up questions, she will not automatically respond.
- Can Akia search up the web for information?
- Yes! If you allow Web Search in your Permissions, she will be able to search the web for information.