Japan’s first AI powered multilingual chatbot available at exclusive hotels and Narita Airport.

Gatwick airport is launching a new passenger-facing app,

one of the several digital innovations that e-retailers can use to their advantage to target the airport’s travellers.

The free app would offer personalised flight alerts, real-time queue updates for check-in and security, intuitive navigation using beacon technology and shopping, restaurant and airport offers instantly redeemable just with a touch of a button.

This means that the holidaymakers and business travellers can enjoy a more seamless experience when travelling through Gatwick as it boasts a range of features. Just with one tap users would be able to receive real-time flight updates on flight status and gate information straight to their phone.

Gatwick has already installed 2,000 navigation beacons guiding travellers through terminal buildings, as part of the airport’s £2.5bn transformation programme. The next move is to accompany this feature with instantly redeemable shopping and eating offers that could be ultimately used by retailers, to send exclusive offerers specific to travellers’ terminals as they pass the stores nearby.

Cathal Corcoran, Chief Information Officer, Gatwick Airport, explained: “Our new app is just one of many exciting digital initiatives that our award-winning digital team is developing. We are transforming the way airport information is communicated and will soon connect passengers to intelligent chatbots using Facebook [RDX VFAC ] Messenger, Skype, and other popular apps. He continues: “The airport’s 2000 wayfinding beacons are also a world first and have the capability to enable augmented reality wayfinding for passengers, making it easier to navigate the airport’s two terminal buildings.”

Other initiatives going live soon as part of Gatwick’s ‘digital transformation’ programme include advanced chat-bots, augmented reality wayfinding and the airport wise-use of Internet of Things.

which is proving to be an effective communication tool for the carrier.

At the Facebook F8 Conference this week, Aeromexico revealed that in the six months since the launch of the Aerobot chatbot, automation in the customer service department has increased from 0% to 96%. In addition, the average customer service resolution time via chat has dropped from 16 minutes to two minutes.

The artificial intelligence (AI) powered bot has been used by passengers for tasks such as buying tickets, checking flight statuses and finding destination-based recommendations. A new group booking feature has now been added to simplify the booking process for families and groups of travellers.

Stan Chudnovsky, Vice President of Product for Messenger, explained: “This feature will allow groups to plan a trip together from within Messenger with the help of the AI customer service chatbot and split payments.”

Up until now, users have been able to pose questions to Aerobot in Spanish only, but English language functionality will soon be added.

Brian Gross, Vice President of Digital Innovation at Aeromexico, said: “Mexicans are some of the most avid users of social chat platforms, such as Facebook Messenger and we saw a definite gap in what was being done to ease ongoing traveller pain points.”

source : https://tinyurl.com/ltr5tyf

Srinivas Kasthoori – Associate Vice President of Travel, Transportation and Hospitality Industry Group at Mindtree

Photo credit: Mindtree

Technology advances in social media and mobile have given travelers unprecedented power to demand better customer service across the entire travel experience. Travelers prefer the immediacy of self-services and have been conditioned to expect quick responses and resolutions to their needs and concerns, making it more difficult for airline organizations to address each and every inquiry with traditional tools and channels.

Chatbot technology offers an instant resolution to most of the typical traveler queries and creates an unprecedented quality of passenger engagement through personalized traveler experience. Instead of picking up a phone, passengers might turn to a chatbot in Facebook Messenger (or Skype, Whatsapp, Viber or any messaging app of preference) first, knowing a chatbot is always available and is able to provide some assistance. Airlines could use chatbots to deal with the initial influx of requests. Advances in cognitive technologies – such as natural language dialog capabilities – allow airline organizations to offer conversational capabilities such as Chatbots, letting their travelers check status and make reservations through natural language text and speech.

The airlines that capitalize on chatbot technologies can expect to build their brand, improve sales and ancillary revenues, minimize customer churn and reduce service costs.

Getting started with a conversational journey

The airline travel ecosystem has more than a handful of critical customer business processes, and also has a very long funnel compared with other industries. In the early stage, travelers are typically unsure of the details of their trip, looking for flights to various destinations and time periods. Questions at this stage range from: “can I get vegan meals on my international flight?” to “what is the baggage limit on international flights?”. Travelers further down the funnel might be business travelers or frequent fliers, who may need less guidance but may be looking for a different kind of information such as “how many more segments I need to take to become a platinum member?”. As both type of travelers get close to their flying date and time, their questions may change to “which gate do I need to get to?” and the more typical “is my flight on schedule?”.

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Oscar will initially assist customers with commonly asked queries, saving them time and offering a more personalised experience than searching a traditional Frequently Asked Questions section online. As with other AI technology, Oscar will learn based on the conversations people have with him, becoming more user friendly and more helpful the more he interacts.

Air New Zealand Chief Digital Officer Avi Golan says Oscar has been launched as a beta product allowing customers to play an active role in training him.

“This is a new approach for us, getting Oscar out fast and in the early-development stages so that we can build and co-create with our customers. Given Oscar learns natural language it makes sense he learns directly from our customers the types of information they want to know and the language they use, rather than airline jargon.

“The world’s best digital companies foster a culture of customer-led design and collaboration and for the airline to meet its big digital ambitions we must embed this culture of thinking, acting and doing as leading digital companies do.”

Oscar has initially been launched as a help chatbot to assist with Air New Zealand Lounge, Airpoints and baggage queries but the airline has big plans for him, including integration with the Air New Zealand Mobile app, via both voice and text, and with other chat platforms and in-home digital assistants.

“Over time we want Oscar to become a virtual travel assistant helping customers across every stage of the journey, with the ability to recognise who you are, inform you about your flights, make or change a booking, select seats, check you in, and offer to help sort you a taxi to the airport,” says Mr Golan.

“There’s no doubt that AI is the future, allowing customers to better self-serve within their channel of choice, further improving the customer experience.”

Customers with queries about Airpoints, baggage or Air New Zealand lounges are encouraged to put Oscar to the test. He can be found in the Help & Contact section of the airline’s New Zealand website.

source  :https://tinyurl.com/z6jkhng