IndiGo and Air India enhance customer care services with AI-based tools

The airlines aim to reduce passenger query response times and improve customer care efficiency with this initiative.

IndiGo and Air India are integrating AI-based tools into their customer care systems to handle a higher volume of customer queries through virtual assistants, mentions a Mint report. This approach aims to reduce response times and boost the efficiency of their customer service operations.

IndiGo reported to Mint that since launching its chatbot '6Eskai' in November 2023, the workload for its customer service agents has decreased by 75%. The airline developed 6Eskai in partnership with Microsoft. This AI chatbot leverages OpenAI's GPT-4, a multimodal language model capable of generating text from both textual and visual inputs.

An IndiGo spokesperson told Mint, “We have seen over 6,000 bookings made through 6Eskai over the website and mobile application. From March 2024 till date, over 39,000 boarding passes have been issued through the chatbot."

“We also conduct daily scans of the customer chat interactions to improve the overall experience of our customers with regard to the AI chatbot," the spokesperson added.

Air India, backed by the Tata group has begun to experience the benefits of generative artificial intelligence in its customer service operations. In 2023, Air India introduced a generative AI virtual agent named ‘AI.g’. This virtual assistant has processed over two million customer queries to date, tasks that previously would have required the involvement of a human customer service agent.

"Since AI.g’s implementation, Air India has achieved a containment ratio of 93%, meaning only 7% of customer queries need to be escalated to a human agent. The virtual agent addresses over 1,300 topics, delivers human-like responses, and leverages general knowledge—a capability not present in earlier versions of AI-based tools," the airline told Mint.

Air India is currently integrating computer vision technologies into its mobile app to improve the customer experience. Additionally, the airline is implementing artificial intelligence across various marketing functions on its website and mobile app platform. The adoption of artificial intelligence and related technologies is anticipated to grow even more significantly over the next one to two years.