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Airline replaces all call centres with chatbots
In a victory for automation over the human touch, budget airline AirAsia has closed its voice call centres in favour of going all-in on AI chatbots.
The airline’s chief customer happiness officer Adam Geneave admitted the move was ‘controversial’ but says the future of customer service is messaging and voice artificial intelligence.
The company has full confidence in its Ava chatbot.
"We’re so proud of Ava. She’s done some amazing work for our guests. We weren’t the first airline to launch a chatbot but we really believe we’ve launched one of the best and through Ava you can book a flight, you can add things to your booking, you can change details, she can answer hundreds of questions," Geneave said.
Ava is part of the airline’s Salesforce platform and when the bot cannot provide an answer it switches to Salesforce live chat.
"We had nine different call centres, we had different systems managing our call centres and our live chat and our social media, and we’ve been able to bring all those things together into that omni-channel environment," he said.
"Nobody wants to sit on hold to a voice call centre anymore. Life is about messaging,"
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Editor for TravelMole North America and Asia pacific regions. Ray is a highly experienced (15+ years) skilled journalist and editor predominantly in travel, hospitality and lifestyle working with a huge number of major market-leading brands. He has also cover in-depth news, interviews and features in general business, finance, tech and geopolitical issues for a select few major news outlets and publishers.
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