Capital A’s new chatbot
Capital A have announced they are replacing their AirAsia Virtual Allstar (AVA) with ‘Ask Bo,’ a new chatbot with enhanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities (ML).
CEO Capital A, Tony Fernandes said:
“We thank AVA for her achievements in handling more than 113 million guests since 2019, and handling over 43 million queries in 2020 at the peak of Covid. Given the size of the airline that AirAsia is, with thousands of refunds and flight change requests, humans alone cannot cope, we have to also use technology. We learned through AVA how to use artificial intelligence to answer complex and sizable queries better and faster.”
The new chatbot, Ask Bo, has been constructed over the last eight months, learning from previous years what users wants and what their most common requests are.
Kesavan Sivanandam, Chief Airport and Customer Experience Officer, AirAsia Aviation Group highlighted some of the new features of the chatbot. These include live updates on flight status, push notifications for on the day changes of operations, baggage information including tracking, arrival belt, and mishandled baggage report. Furthermore, Ask Bo will give passengers more autonomy helping them to change flights and request refunds and from March, provide access to a human agent.
As AI and ML play an increasingly prominent role in the customer experience aspects of aviation, the technology is continuously being honed and refined. It will be interesting to see how AirAsia customers respond to the new chatbot.
At Aviation Festival Asia 2023, Tony Fernandes will be giving the keynote interview on understanding how and why the airline industry needs to digitally diversify and what AirAsia have in store in 2023.
For more on chatbots and AI read: I asked ChatGPT what it means for the future of the aviation industry
Article by Jess Brownlow
