A website chatbot for self storage facilities

Self storage is bought under pressure: a move completing on Friday, a flat being cleared, a business that has outgrown its stockroom. People shop at night, compare three sites, and choose the one whose website answers the size question. An Allinaa assistant on your website answers it from information you have approved, and captures the enquiry while your office is closed.

"What size do I need?" is the whole conversation

Nobody knows what fifty square feet looks like. What they know is what they own: a one-bedroom flat, a three-piece suite and twenty boxes, the contents of a garage, pallets of stock. Write a plain-language guide into the knowledge - each unit size you have, with two or three recognisable contents for each - and the assistant will match a description to a size the same way your staff do on the phone.

Note the honesty in that last sentence. It converts better than a confident recommendation, and it is also true, which matters more.

Availability and price: the two it must not invent

Unit availability changes hourly and the assistant has no access to your management system. It must not say a size is available, must not hold a unit, and must not quote a weekly rate unless that rate is written in your knowledge and you keep it current. Write the sentence it uses instead - that availability and the current rate are confirmed by the office, and that you will call back with both - and the enquiry still lands, without a promise you cannot keep.

If you run promotions, treat them as a dated block: write what the offer is and the date it was last checked, and remove it when it ends. The assistant does not know today's date and will not reason about deadlines, so never ask it to work out whether an offer still applies.

What can and cannot be stored, and who may enter

These are the questions that generate complaints when they are answered late:

• Access hours, including whether access is 24 hours or gated, and what happens on public holidays
• Whether you require insurance, and whether a customer may use their own policy
• What is prohibited - fuel, gas bottles, paint, perishables, anything living, anything illegal - stated plainly
• Whether a business may use the address for deliveries, and whether couriers can be received
• Notice period to leave, and whether the first or last period is pro-rated
• Vehicle access: van sizes the yard takes, trolleys, lifts, and whether the unit is upstairs

The upstairs question is worth writing down separately. A customer who discovers at the van that their unit is up a flight of stairs is a bad review, and one sentence in the knowledge prevents it.

Business storage is a different buyer

An online seller storing stock, a trade customer keeping tools, an office archiving files - these buy on access hours, delivery acceptance, power and whether they can work in the unit. Write that path separately, including what you do not allow, because a business that moves in on the wrong assumption moves out noisily.

What an enquiry should carry

The assistant asks up to three short questions, one at a time: roughly what is being stored, when it needs to start, and how long for. Then it offers the inquiry form - the visitor confirms their own contact details and agrees to be contacted, your office gets an e-mail, and the enquiry waits in your inbox with a status, private notes and CSV export, so Monday morning starts with a call list instead of an empty screen. See after-hours answers and capturing contacts and inquiries.

Existing customers

Current customers will ask about their balance, their gate code and their move-out date. The assistant has no access to your records and cannot answer any of those; it should say so plainly and hand over to a person, with the whole thread visible. That is a better experience than a wrong balance, and it is the honest answer. See existing-customer questions.