KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is taking the next step in social servicing by testing artificial intelligence (AI) to help answer customer questions.
KLM is one of the airline world’s leaders in the use of social media for passenger service.
In August 2016, KLM had over 22.5 million fans and followers on various social media platforms. Through these channels, KLM is mentioned more than 100,000 times a week.
A dedicated team of 235 social media service agents personally engages in 15,000 conversations a week on Facebook, Messenger, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, WeChat, KakaoTalk and VKontakte.
The artificial intelligence trial is an attempt to handle a greater volume of questions while still maintaining a personal approach and speed.
When an agent needs to answer an incoming question, he or she gets a proposed answer through AI, which is trained on more than 60,000 KLM questions and answers.
The agent decides whether the proposed answer is the right answer to the question, adjusts it if necessary and sends it across the appropriate social media channel.
The system learns based on what the agent does, and becomes smarter in real time.
The DigitalGenius AI system is integrated directly into KLM’s Customer Relationship Management tool, and provides a layer of deep learning and artificial intelligence to service agents in real time.
Tjalling Smit, Senior Vice President Digital Air France KLM:
“A personal approach is extremely important to KLM as this is what distinguishes our social media service. Applying AI, KLM can handle a greater volume of questions while still maintaining its personal approach and speed.”
Mikhail Naumov, President & CSO DigitalGenius:
“In a noisy space like artificial intelligence, it’s important to focus on real metrics and results. KLM is an industry leader in adopting new technology and has become the first global company to deploy a deep learning product in its customer service operation to help and engage with customers. The deployment of DigitalGenius is a prime example of what companies can do to take the next step in customer service and empower their human agents with practical AI.”
N.B. Image credit: KLM
