What is a transportation answering service for marinas and ferries?
It is the service that picks up when your dock office, ferry terminal or charter desk cannot. Zanus AI does it with one AI on your own number, your website chat, your e-mail and your web forms: it answers schedule, fare, slip and charter questions from your approved information, books trips and holds slips, takes messages with the callback number read back and puts the right calls through to your people.
Can the AI answer sailing times, fares and parking questions?
Yes, from what you give it. Lisa reads your schedule, fare list, parking and boarding pages, and the AI answers from them on the phone, in the chat and by e-mail. When a sailing changes, you update the notice once and every door says the same thing. A question it has no approved answer for goes to the person you name.
Does the AI sell ferry tickets or take card payments?
No. It issues no tickets and takes no card payments. It answers the fare, takes the passenger's reservation request or holds the space your rules allow, and points the purchase to your own ticketing or to a person at the terminal. Your payment system stays exactly where it is today.
How does it handle weather cancellations and delays?
Your captain or operations desk decides; the AI only repeats the decision. Post the notice as an always-say rule and every caller, chat visitor and e-mail hears it in your words. You can also send an e-mail campaign to the filtered group of guests booked on that trip, and their requests to rebook land on your office's list.
Can it book boat charters into each captain's or boat's calendar?
Yes. Each boat, captain or guide has a calendar of their own, and the AI books by phone, chat and form only into the times that are open. Guests get a confirmation and a reminder, and AI Auto-Call can phone them the evening before: yes keeps the trip, no frees the seats for the next caller.
Can a marina use it to take slip and mooring requests?
Yes. Slips, moorings, rental boats and kayaks can each be a resource with its own calendar. A transient boater's request by phone, chat, e-mail or form is answered at once, a matching slip is held and your dock manager confirms it. Seasonal slip holders' questions about shore power, pump-out or fuel dock hours are answered from your own dock rules.
Can we keep our marina's or ferry line's phone number?
Yes. Keep the number on your website, your signs and your brochures, and forward it the way you would for any answering service. There is no porting and nothing to install, and the calls your rules send to staff are transferred with who is calling and why.
Which languages does it speak with passengers and boaters?
The caller's own. Visitors from abroad are answered on the phone in their language, the website chat works in 40 languages by text or by voice, and a call can be passed to the crew member who speaks it. A talking avatar can also greet guests on your website.
Will it replace our dock office or ticket window staff?
That is not the point of it. The AI takes the repeat questions, the summer overflow and the calls after the office closes, so your people can stay with the boater at the counter and the passengers on the ramp. Each desk chooses AI only, AI first or a person first, and you can change it any day of the season.
Can hotels and concierges sell our charters for us?
Yes. Zanus AI includes a partner portal for resellers, so the hotel concierges and travel desks that sell your trips have their own door to you. Gift cards for charters, cruises and boat rentals can be sold on every channel as well, which suits the holiday season when guests shop for presents.
How much does a transportation answering service like this cost?
Zanus AI is priced per company, never per seat, so every captain, dockhand and office person works under one subscription, in season and out of it. You choose the modules your marina, ferry or charter business needs, and the plans are on the pricing page.
How quickly can it start answering our boaters?
In about 2 minutes. Forward your line, tell Lisa your boats, slips, routes, seasons and after-hours rules, and the AI starts answering. Lisa reads your website for everything else, and each change she suggests is shown to you first and applied only when you say yes.
Are our calls recorded?
Not unless you turn it on: call recording is off as shipped. Transcripts of the calls your people take go only to their own department, and each staff member sees only the departments you give them. You decide what the AI may say about bookings, passengers and slip holders.
What is the difference between the 7-day free trial and the demo?
The free trial builds a private sandbox from your own website for 7 days, with a phone line that answers as your business, and it needs no card. The demo is ready-made: there is nothing to set up, and it arrives by e-mail in about 2 minutes.
