One of the biggest trends shaping travel, hospitality, and leisure is connectedness with customers. Enterprises in these sectors are deeply focused on hyper-personalization and leveraging technology to provide the right experience to customers using the right channel, at the right time, with the right product.
One of the biggest channels of communication and interaction with customers in these sectors is Contact Centers. Organizations have been leveraging AI-based “Agent Assist” technology to support human agents for better interactions with their customers, either for inbound or outbound calls, chats, or emails.
This includes functionality such as information retrieval, response suggestions based on previous interactions, automation of routine tasks, real-time assistance, and, of course, training and onboarding of human agents.
As Agent Assist technology evolves, there is a growing need to create an Agent Assistant for many other roles in the airline sector. Some examples that come to mind:
- Airlines Gate Agent: A gate agent is a key customer-facing persona that provides the best experience to the flyers as well as ensures a quick turnaround for the agent.
From pre-flight gate preparation to post-departure activities, a gate agent handles a multitude of tasks, including boarding procedures, documentation, and customer service, all within a tight timeframe. Imagine: during times of irregular operations (IROPS), a gate agent could greatly benefit from having a helper at their disposal to assist flyers.
Some simple tasks that can be automated include pre-flight checklists, real-time aircraft health monitoring with updated information provided to the agent, safety checks on the flight, no-show management from other delayed flights, coordination for special needs, biometric-based boarding, generating flight manifests, digital documentation, etc.
- Airlines Ramp Agent: Just as with the gate agent, a ramp agent is equally responsible for ensuring the quick turnaround of aircraft. While they are not customer-facing, their actions have a direct impact on the flyer who is being managed by a gate agent. AI can be leveraged to support ramp agents in multiple ways, including managing the complex logistics of refueling, catering, baggage, and cargo handling by analyzing data from multiple sources and optimizing schedules and resources. For the ramp agent, AI helpers can optimize efficient loading patterns and sequences. AI helpers can also monitor safety compliance using computer vision.
- Flight Attendants: The in-flight crew has captive customers, and often, that experience is the key to loyalty creation among flyers. AI helpers can be leveraged to support the crew by providing real-time access to passenger information and data, including meal preferences, flying history, last experience, etc. AI helpers can also be leveraged for monitoring cabin conditions, expected weather patterns, seatbelts, temperature, in-flight entertainment (IFE), food inventory, etc. AI can also facilitate communication between the crew and the pilots.
- Accounting Resources: AI helpers can streamline accounting functions with their ability to process large volumes of data. These areas include fraud detection and risk management, reconciliation, data entry, forecasting and budgeting, audits, compliance and reporting, cost management, etc. AI helpers can be used for settlement processes for interlining, including fare calculations and financial settlements between airlines.
- Pricing Resources: Airlines’ pricing algorithms were written many years ago, and given their complexity and stability, most organizations are reluctant to change them. With AI, many organizations in this sector have started to look at revamping this functionality by leveraging real-time price optimization, including booking patterns, competitor pricing, events, etc., to adjust fares in real-time. AI helpers can also help with better yield management by predicting future trends in ticketing.
These are only some examples, and there is a case to be made to look at AI from the perspective of employee personas and provide them with a virtual minion so that they can provide better service to their customers. This approach helps improve both employee and customer experiences – after all, happy employees equate to happy customers.
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