How AI voice technology can revolutionise travel in 2019 With Benjamin Boesch

By Benjamin Boesch, Head – Digital and eCommerce, VFS Global.

Move over text, the new age of digital evolution revolves around voice as a mode of digital data. Artificial Intelligence has silently taken over much of our daily lives and homes without most of us even realising it, with voice playing a lead role. While smartphones have already been part of our routine since a long time now, voice assistants are a new rage, assisting us in our day-to-day lives.

Voice assistants use voice recognition, speech synthesis and natural language processing (NLP) to provide a service through a particular application. Assistants like Alexa and Google Home have become an important part of families, assisting them with everything from listening to music, shopping, booking cabs and integrating with IoT devices to even control home equipment and secure homes.

With the increased usage of mobile phones, usage of voice for all services including Search queries is bound to increase, and by 2020 is expected to be used in 50% of all services.

Where can AI be applied on voice?

Call centres, predominantly on voice, can leverage the use of AI to provide a delightful experience for customers.

Imagine the following journey of a customer calling up the call centre: To the delight of the customer, the voice bot greets the customer by name as soon as his call is answered, automatically identified on the basis of his voice or registered mobile number. No authentication required here!

The reason for which the customer has called up the call centre is pre-empted by the AI-powered system, which connects with back-end systems and pro-actively provides the necessary details. Before the request is even made!

For any specific transactions, the customer directly moves to the specific queue and responds to pointed questions. No need to move through complicated IVR queues!

In this way, AI empowers organisations as well as customers to move to a completely self-powered servicing journey.

Speech analytics technology has provided ways and means for organizations to understand the customer needs and expectations better by analysing calls: duration of the call, the reason for making the call, customer sentiments, organizations ability/inability to service the customer, call centre agents ability to handle the call. This can help the organizations make drastic changes in the way they service customers by aligning to expectations.

How has Travel been impacted by Artificial Intelligence?

AI can play a significant role in enriching customer experience in the travel industry, is it does in other consumer-facing industries.

A customer looking to travel seeks a fulsome experience right from the time he plans his travel. The services sought by him covers a range of industries including Visa processing, forex, airline ticket booking, food, hotel accommodation, local tourism, insurance etc.

AI can play an enriching role by connecting all these dots together, also playing the role of consulting, with no role of manual interventions. AI algorithms, on the basis of historical experiences and practices, can mimic human interactions with minimal error, high security, and problem-solving capabilities.

Travel-related companies are making investments in AI-powered technological features for everything from checking into a hotel to applying for a visa.

For instance, Connie, a hotel concierge that’s a two-feet high robot, debuted in Hilton hotels a few years ago to assist guests as to what to visit, where to eat or the facilities at the hotel.  For guests seeking directions, Connie can move itself to point in the right direction – while its eyes can even display human emotions such as understanding, confusion or delight.

The hotel chain says it introduced Connie to eliminate customer frustrations such as queuing in line or waiting on the phone to ask hotel staff a question. In addition to providing a unique experience for the customer, it’s freeing up staff to do other jobs, helping the hotel to operate more efficiently.

The example of Connie also exemplifies how AI has turned traditional business strategy on its head.

Whereas AI solutions were originally developed at a demographic level – in other words, customised for a broad group of people with similar characteristics – AI can now tailor solutions for an individual, recognising the unique demands each individual has.

In a high controlled and regulated industry involving governments, including visa processing and other citizen services, VFS Global launched its own chatbot, ViVA, an AI powered chat bot, first in the visa services industry.

ViVA

ViVA was recently launched by VFS Global to provide 24-hour-a-day, 365 days-a-year, highly nuanced responses to applicant queries on visa application processes, categories, rules and regulations. Since its introduction, VFS Global’s ViVA has significantly reduced turnaround times and provides invaluable support to customer service teams so they can get on with other tasks.

ViVA is pre-emptive in nature and provides relevant information basis the nature of requests made. Applicants seeking visa application status updates, are also provided other relevant information including document pick-up and delivery options. With real time monitoring of customer journey and co-browse feature, real time assistance is pro-actively provided to applicants facing issues online.

VFS Global is also exploring usage of AI in many other use cases, which can significantly improve servicing, enable remote processing and reduce process time.

It is now amply clear that AI and similar digital assets may be useful complements to human resources for most companies in the consumer services space. In travel-related services too, AI is just the right platform to trigger a revolution and take customer experience to the next level.

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