Thanks
Lastly, you are right, some of the questions cannot be answered by us, those are a fraction of the inquires and we give you, the host, the option to not let those interrupt you in your vacation. If you do want us to send you important questions we will. Think about us as a personal receptionist desk.
Koby, co-founder of SuperHost
When we answer our guests we either do it by phone and resolve their problem or question, or by message on email/airbnb platform. We find that our guests are very satisfied by the level of detail that we put on our answers. For example our directions from the airport are a full page with both public transport options and prices and other more private options like shuttles and taxis.
I hope that answer your question. Feel free to ask me any other question you may have.
This solution is great for general area questions, but guests will likely still have specific questions about the actual building they are in (how do I turn on the hot water, etc). How will you deal with that?
Edit: Koby's response just popped up as I was composing this; I like the idea of learning from previous responses!
You really just need to screen your guests better.
I'm not dismissing the idea, I think it's great for people that need to have their Airbnb monitored. However, you're the equivalent of a property manager. If I'm renting out the room or apartment I live in, I don't see the value. If you're talking about helping out people who have multiple properties on Airbnb, then I could see the potential market. I doubt it's going to have a major upside though.
But hey, prove me wrong. :-)
Can you elaborate on how you do this?
It's helped me keep my 2BR/2BA apartment booked solid for the last 8 months with wonderful guests, some of whom I happily consider friends. It also helped me reduce my effective rent payment to levels below most places in the US and Canada, let alone Palo Alto.
My best Airbnb experiences have been when an owner/family has been the contact. The worst have generally been where there was an intermediary - some have been exceptionally rude. Had one in Milan where a woman just waved her hand mid-sentence, couldn't be bothered answering my second question (do you have the keys so we can lock up when we go out), gave me a set of 8 keys without explanation and walked out. The apartment had no info sheet or anything. Would've taken her 30 seconds to point out what needed to be locked and which key matched which lock. It was lucky that I held her up to clarify because she'd given us a set of keys for a different apartment.
Koby, co-founder of SuperHost
A few of the ladies at the answering service started doing simple tech support for the customers. Reboot your modem/computer/check your password. Said they were bored and it was interesting and didn't mind. Ended up giving them accounts for free. The call volume was noticeably lower after that. A few hours without doing dialup tech support is like a slice of heaven.
I feel like this is sorta like that. You can answer a few of the more common questions, maybe get your users to fill out details (maybe a standard form that prints to a handout for the guests even) and use those to populate your agents screens when a call comes in. Stuff outside the scope of the info you gathered gets kicked to the user. They don't get a completely free vacation time, but it's better than it was. Don't promise it'll be 100% interruption free. That means you need to change your marketing a bit, but it's still kinda cool what your offering
Best of luck! Pools of knowledge are going to be big.
