Background
A leading deals and experiences marketplace wanted to reduce friction in its purchase journey and improve conversion rates from mobile-first users. While the platform offered a wide range of location-based deals and experiences, completing a booking required users to navigate multiple screens, forms, and redirects.
To simplify this journey, the company aimed to transform chat into a full transactional channel—allowing users to discover deals, complete bookings, and make payments entirely within a conversational interface.
Agenthum Solutions partnered with the company to design and build a rule-based conversational commerce platform with a standalone booking engine, optimized for chat-driven interactions.
What They Do
The company curates and sells location-based deals and experiences across multiple categories. Their operations involve:
• Publishing deals by location, category, pricing, and availability
• Allowing customers to select dates, time slots, and group size
• Managing real-time availability and booking capacity
• Processing secure payments and confirmations
• Supporting booking modifications, cancellations, and refunds
• Handling high-volume customer interactions across digital channels
This requires tight coordination between deal discovery, booking logic, inventory management, and payments.
Challenges
| Challenge | Description |
|---|---|
| High Booking Drop-Offs | Users frequently abandoned bookings due to multi-step forms, page redirects, and complex navigation flows. |
| No End-to-End Conversational Booking | Chat channels were limited to discovery or support and did not support complete booking and payment journeys. |
| Complex Booking Rules | Deals varied by date, time slot, capacity, and guest requirements, making booking logic difficult to manage. |
| Inventory & Concurrency Risks | Preventing double bookings required real-time availability validation and reservation locking. |
| Payment Friction | External payment redirections caused drop-offs and delayed booking confirmation. |
| Post-Booking Support Overhead | Booking modifications, cancellations, refunds, and status queries increased operational support load. |
Our Approach
Agenthum Solutions designed a deterministic, rule-based conversational platform that guided users step by step through deal discovery, booking, and payment—without leaving the chat interface.
Key principles included:
• Structured conversation flows instead of free-form chat
• A standalone booking engine decoupled from the chat UI
• Real-time inventory validation and reservation locking
• Secure, PCI-compliant payment handling inside chat
• Built-in post-booking management workflows
The platform was designed to be scalable, fast, and extensible across channels.
Architecture Overview
Solution Overview
1. Rule-Based Deal Discovery
• Location resolution via user profile or chat prompts
• Category-based navigation using persistent buttons
• Rich deal cards with pricing, highlights, and “Book Now” actions
2. Conversational Booking Engine
• Dynamic booking flows based on deal type
• Inline date and time selection inside chat
• Guest and party-size configuration with capacity validation
• Reservation locking to prevent concurrent booking conflicts
3. Integrated Payments in Chat
• Secure payment initiation within the conversational flow
• Support for cards, UPI, and wallets
• Real-time payment confirmation and booking synchronization
4. Post-Booking Management
• Instant booking confirmation with reference ID
• Modification and cancellation workflows
• Refund initiation based on defined policies
• Booking history and status inquiries via chat
Tools & Technologies Used
| Category | Technologies Used |
|---|---|
| Frontend |
|
| Backend & Booking Engine |
|
| Data & Inventory |
|
| Payments |
|
| Messaging & Channels |
|
| Cloud & DevOps |
|
Key Results & Expected Impact
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Booking Completion | High drop-offs across multi-step flows | Higher completion via chat-based booking |
| User Journey Complexity | Multiple screens and redirects | End-to-end booking completed inside chat |
| Inventory Accuracy | Risk of overbooking and conflicts | Real-time inventory locking and validation |
| Payment Completion | Drop-offs during external payment steps | Seamless in-chat payment confirmation |
| Platform Reliability | Not optimized for transactional chat | >99.5% uptime during operations |
Conclusion
By transforming chat into a complete transactional channel, Agenthum Solutions enabled the marketplace to simplify deal purchases and deliver a seamless conversational booking experience. The rule-based conversational commerce platform combined structured chat flows, a robust booking engine, real-time inventory management, and secure payments—creating a scalable foundation for higher conversions, better user experience, and future channel expansion.