One chatbot can answer for several locations if every branch fact carries the branch's name, each branch has its own page with the same layout, and one overview page compares them all. The common failure is a wrong-branch answer: the bot finds "We open at 8am on Saturdays" and quotes it for the wrong town, because the passage never said which town. Fixing that is mostly a writing job, plus a short decision about whether your branches belong in one chatbot or several.
Our post on running one AI receptionist across several locations covers routing enquiries to the right branch. This one is about how to organise the information itself.
Why branch answers get mixed up
When SpideyChat learns a page, it keeps the page title at the top of the text and splits the rest into passages of about a thousand characters. A visitor's question is matched against all of those passages, and the five closest are handed to the bot to answer from.
Two things follow for multi-location businesses.
The page title only travels with the first passage. If your Leeds page has a long services section and the opening hours appear further down, the passage with the hours may not contain the word Leeds at all.
Branch pages look alike. Most location pages share a template: hours, address, parking, services. To the search step, "Saturday 8am to 4pm" on the York page and "Saturday 9am to 5pm" on the Leeds page are almost equally good matches for "what time do you open on Saturday?". If neither passage names its branch, the bot cannot tell which is which.
The bot is told to ask a short clarifying question when a request could relate to several services or pages it has found, listing the options it sees. That helps, but only when the branch names are in the text for it to list.
Write facts that name their branch
The single most useful change is to repeat the branch name in each fact, even when it feels redundant on the page.
- Instead of "Opening hours: Mon to Fri 8am to 6pm", write "Leeds branch opening hours: Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm."
- Instead of "Free parking at the rear", write "The Leeds branch has free parking at the rear of the building, entered from Mill Street."
- Instead of "Services available", write "Services at the Leeds branch: full service, MOT testing and tyre fitting. MOT testing is not available at York."
Headings help too. "Leeds: opening hours" and "Leeds: parking and access" keep the name close to the facts, because a heading sits at the start of its section's text.
A page layout that works
Give each branch its own page, and use the same sections in the same order on every one. Consistency makes gaps obvious: if York's page has no parking section, you notice.
A good branch page covers:
- Branch name and full address, in the body text. The crawler strips headers and footers, so an address that only sits in the footer is lost.
- Opening hours, including bank holidays and any day that differs.
- How to get there: parking, public transport, access.
- Services or products offered here, and the ones that are not.
- Prices, if they differ by branch. If they do not, say "Prices are the same at all our branches" once on each page.
- Contact details for that branch.
- Branch-specific notes: a step-free entrance, a collection point, a different booking process.
Then add one overview page with a table or list of all branches side by side: name, town, hours, and key services. Questions such as "which branch is open on Sundays?" or "where is your nearest branch to Harrogate?" need a comparison, and the bot only sees a handful of passages at a time. A single overview gives it the whole picture in one place.
For the questions that span branches, Q&A pairs work well: "Which branches do MOT tests? Leeds and Wakefield. York does not offer MOT testing."
Keeping branch information current
Branch details change more often than group details: a temporary closure, a holiday rota, a new manager. When a branch page changes, re-crawl it. A re-crawled page replaces its older copy in the bot's knowledge. Anything you pasted or uploaded separately, such as a holiday hours notice, has to be deleted by hand when it stops applying.
After any change, ask the same short list of test questions for each branch. Our guide to testing your chatbot before going live explains how to build that list, and SpideyChat can save the questions with the words each answer must contain and re-run them later.
One chatbot or one per branch
One chatbot is usually right when branches share a brand, prices and policies. Visitors get one assistant, and you maintain one knowledge base.
A chatbot per branch makes more sense when:
- branches set their own prices, services or policies;
- branches are run by different owners or franchisees;
- each branch must receive its own enquiries, since the lead notification email is set per chatbot;
- each branch has its own website in a different style or language.
Each chatbot has its own knowledge, welcome message and settings. The number of chatbots depends on the plan: Free includes 1, Starter 3, Pro 10 and Enterprise is unlimited.
How branch websites count against your plan
Each chatbot has a license that lists the websites it may run on. The limits per chatbot are 1 website on Free, 3 on Starter, 10 on Pro and unlimited on Enterprise.
What counts as one website matters here:
- Branch pages on one domain, such as example.com/leeds and example.com/york, are one website.
- Branch subdomains, such as leeds.example.com and york.example.com, are included with example.com once that is registered. Register the main domain first, because a subdomain does not cover its parent.
- Separate branch domains, such as examplecars-leeds.co.uk and examplecars-york.co.uk, each count as a website.
The post on chatbot licenses and website limits covers staging sites, domain moves and what happens at the limit.
Choose the plan for your branches
List your branches, note whether their pages live on one domain or several, and decide whether they share one chatbot. Then compare the chatbot and website allowances on the pricing page. For most groups with one website and shared policies, a single chatbot with well-named branch pages is the simplest setup to run.