TravelBird has become the latest travel company to adopt artificial intelligence for customer service through a partnership with DigitalGenius.

The new predictive customer care system, which will reside in the company’s Zendesk customer platform, will use AI to refine and expedite customer support response.

The decision to adopt machine learning systems follows growth in the number of customer queries the company handles, some 900,000 incoming questions annually it says, in 11 languages by email, phone, social media and SMS.

Symen Jansma, CEO and Founder of TravelBird, says of the decision to adopt AI:

“We want to better serve our travelers every day, which means quick response times for traveller queries and personalized service. With our partnership with DigitalGenius, we let computers do what they do best and leave the work involving real human connection to our experts.”

The DigitalGenius system is an add-on to CRM systems like Salesforce or Zendesk, which makes it relatively fast and easy for companies to adopt.

The system focuses on optimizing text interactions, and offering agents text-based guides when handling customer matters.

Mikhail Naumov, co-founder and CSO at DigitalGenius explains:

“Companies that want to leverage AI can train on the historical customer service transcripts, tickets and conversation logs that already took place between human agents and human customers.

“By using deep learning, specifically focused on converting language transcripts to mathematical representations of language called word vectors, and using the mathematical representation of those chat logs to train a model that can make predictions for customer service around the metadata. Who should the question go to? What is the sentiment of the customer? What are they asking you now?

“It takes historical conversation records on text-based channels like email web support, live chat, Facebook messenger, twitter. For companies using mobile channels, sms, live chat. Helps support team handle increased volumes.”

Naumov says that adopting these deep learning AI systems can enhance the effectiveness and job satisfaction of customer service agents.

“The reality is that the way AI is used today it will assist and empower human agents to be better and more efficient. Of course, that means that there is some automation that is involved, but it is done in such a way that it is seamless and makes a good experience for the end customer.”

While the DigitalGenius system is currently text-based without a voice processing component, which Naumov says keeps step with the customer trend of relying more on text-based response.

He says that a recent study by the Everest Group shows that growth of non-voice customer service is at 35%, while the growth of voice conversations is stable to moderate.

“I think that voice will always be important, however companies have to adapt and be able to talk to their customers where their customers are.”

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