Chatbots have emerged as a revolution in the last few years, and almost all service industries have embraced them with open arms. In this article today, let us have a look at how AI chatbots are coming up as a major trend in the aviation industry and benefitting several crucial aspects of its operations.
30-seconds summary:
- AI chatbots are mainly focused on improving customer experiences
- Increased competitiveness among airlines has led to greater AI adoption
- The chatbots reduce operational costs and offer opportunities for revenue growth
- AI chatbots eliminate the need for hiring call centers
There was a time when the term AI (artificial intelligence) used to invoke mental images of dystopian futures and humanoid robots. However, AI algorithms and chatbots have now turned into indispensable parts of various applications and devices used on a daily basis. For instance, a majority of websites use AI chatbots to communicate with and aid the customers; there are AI chatbots to enhance your experience on the gaming platforms, and more so. With a majority of industries leveraging the power of AI chatbots to make innovations happen and offer better services, can the aviation industry be far behind?
With the reports showing that global AI implementation in the aviation industry is slated to reach $2.2 billion by 2025, chatbots are among the most prominent trend in the industry at present. Keeping that in mind, we, at Avlon Shiksha Niketan, a leading aviation college in Kolkata, have brought forth for you today some crucial details about this emerging trend in the aviation industry and how it is emerging as one of the most promising elements of technology integration in the aviation sector.
The growing popularity of chatbots in the aviation industry
AI chatbots are mainly focused on improving customer experiences, and the airlines are always in a bid to score better on this front. At the end of the day, it’s a highly competitive market, and every airline is trying to ace past its competition. Thus, airlines are developing chatbots for providing prompt answers and support to the common doubts and queries of the passengers.
Conversational chatbots are used to help the airlines save their resources by offering answers to common queries usually related to boarding passes, flight details, reservation information, and arrival/departure timings. Automating the process of answering commonly asked questions through AI chatbots ensures faster resolution of issues and greater customer engagement. Per se, the fact that chatbots save time and offer an effective resolution of issues makes them a viable solution for the aviation industry.
Back in 2018, studies had predicted that almost sixty-eight percent of airlines and forty-two percent of airports would start using chatbots in some way by the end of 2020. However, the pandemic assuredly led to an acceleration in the pace of adoption of the technology.
How have the chatbots benefitted the airline industry?
As we have already outlined the prime reason behind airline companies making a beeline in chatbot adoption, let’s move on to the varied ways in which this technology is aiding the sector.
- Remarkable improvements in customer service
Chatbots have the capacity to handle customer queries any time of the day and offer real-time details, which is particularly useful in times of emergency. At the same time, AI chatbots are not bound by linguistic or time zone barriers since they are made to work anyway and any time for the valued customers of the airline. When the customers readily get answers to all their queries from a conversational bot, it helps improve customer experience and elevates the brand image of an airline.
- An effective way to drive customer engagement
AI chatbots can improve customer engagement by offering them the required information, helping them in booking flight tickets, fulfilling customer requests, and enabling them to gather crucial info at one place. And we, at Avon Shiksha Niketan, being one of the best aviation colleges in Kolkata, can vouch for the fact that there is far greater engagement made this way than when the customers have to stand in long waiting lines to find the answers to their queries.
- The resultant opportunities for revenue growth
One of the best things about AI chatbots is that they are quickly going from customer support facilitators to agile solutions for harnessing upselling prospects. The global aviation industry is already on the next stage of innovation with this trend as transactional capacities, offers, and payment gateways are being added to chatbots to boost the conversion rates and improve the revenues.
Reports suggest that forty-seven percent customers are now open to purchasing services or products from chatbots. It creates an immense prospect for the airline companies to cross-sell, sell, or upsell in-flight services and other related facilities to the customers.
- Gaining integrated and streamlined data access
AI chatbots are able to collect and offer all the flight data and information on one platform that the customers can access anytime and from anywhere. Additionally, chatbots are able to keep track of all the interactions with the customers and also offer valuable insights to the airline operators regarding customer preferences, common issues, booking history, and so on. Streamlining the opportunity for easy data access helps the end-users and the airlines to make the industry more efficient in operations.
- Chatbots help in saving time and effort of the airlines
Integration of a conversational, omnichannel chatbot can help the airlines in saving a lot of time and money in dealing with customer queries. With chatbots answering routine queries at all times of the day, the companies are able to deploy their human resources to other valuable activities and problem-solving tasks. It will not just save time and energy but also bring an overall improvement in the process of engagement and customer services.
- Eliminates the need to outsource customer queries to call centers
Like every other business, outsourcing the queries to call centers was the only option airlines had prior to the AI boom in the industry, but not anymore. AI chatbots working round the clock have turned out to be a more economically viable solution than hiring call centers. After the chatbots are developed and deployed, they continue to automate the processes allotted to them. Now, since there are no call centers involved in the middle, the operational costs are reduced remarkably.
The rise and spread of AI chatbot adoption in the aviation industry is amply evident by now. However, we would also like to draw your attention to the fact that a service-based industry like aviation will always need its efficient team of professionals to successfully complete each day’s work. Thus, human resources and AI not only complement each other but also work the best when in conjunction with one another. And, it is the human resources of the aviation industry that we, Avlon Shiksha Niketan, strive to train to perfection to not only make their careers shine the brightest but also to aid in the continued progression of the industry. So, if you want to be a part of this ever-progressing sector of the economy, we, at Avlon, one of the aviation colleges in Kolkata, are right here to show you the best way ahead.