Oversee co-founder and chief technology officer Ami Goldenberg said that Oversee’s newly released AgentAI solution has significantly shortened the response time of customer service staff to the first batch of customers, and plans to use this technology to solve group travel problems soon.
supervision, Formerly FairFly, Launched AgentAI last summer Goldenberg said the aim is to make it a “trusted co-pilot” for agents, especially as many travel management companies continue to face staffing issues in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. He said the company had already built automation into its early products through machine learning, so it saw an opportunity to expand using generative AI to help ease TMC workloads, especially “repetitive or non-revenue-generating tasks.” .
“We’re in a unique position where we’ve already automated that,” Goldenberg said. “We’ve been able to connect to any [global distribution system] or [New Distribution Capability)
system and perform those actions, which is what we did as part of our price assurance
and contract auditing solutions.”
AgentAI is able to respond to simple email inquiries to TMCs
from travelers, such as a question checking on the status of a flight or
whether they have seat assignments on a flight. Unlike some AI TMC email
solutions, AgentAI communicates directly with the traveler rather than
composing an email for an agent to pass on or triaging them.
Oversee ensured accuracy by “making sure the system is
grounded in real data and given specific context, data and a set of rules in
how to engage with the customer,” Goldenberg said. For example, if a
customer asks a question about the weather, and the AI did not have access to
real-time weather information, it would know not to answer the question rather
than responding with irrelevant or out-of-date information. Questions or
requests that AgentAI cannot fulfill are passed on to human agents.
AgentAI also is able to detect tone in an email, so if a
request seems urgent or a traveler seem to be upset or frustrated, it also can
shift the conversation to a human agent, Goldenberg said.
For what AgentAI can answer, however, travelers get an
“immediate response,” rather than having to wait for a live agent to
respond not only to their initial inquiry but any follow-ups, according to
Goldenberg. That “solves the [service-level agreement] Challenges faced by TMCs, he said, “are often based on response times.
For TMCs that have been using the tool, processing times have been reduced by an average of 50 to 70 percent, he said. At the same time, the agencies’ satisfaction scores increased, suggesting travelers had no issues interacting with AI rather than live agents. That’s partly down to the AI’s tone, which “always responds in a polite manner based on prompts,” Goldenberg said.
So far, Altour is the only TMC Oversee has publicly announced it as a customer of AgentAI, although Goldenberg said the company is working with “many TMCs,” some of which have signed agreements and some in pilot stages.
Ultimately, Goldenberg said, AgentAI is “more of a platform than a specific off-the-shelf solution” because each TMC has different requirements, such as how to handle traveler profile information. One of its next areas to expand will be group bookings, which is often a complex process for TMCs that require manual processes.
“When TMC gets [a group booking request]it takes them a long time to process 40 reservations; “It involves a lot of approvals and various back-office steps required,” he said. “We can help automate that.”
In addition to email, work is also underway on voice response elements. Goldenberg described this as an “early discussion” because he said the industry may not be fully ready for voice AI solutions even though the technology already exists.
“Whatever we build for email also works for voice. We just have to make very small adjustments in how we handle conversation flow,” he said. “It has to be responsive, even faster and more consistent.”
While developing its AI platform, Oversee has also announced appointments in recent weeks Former BCD Travel President and CEO John Snyder presented to its advisory board. Goldenberg said his advice will help Oversee increase its TMC marketing efforts and help the company “better tailor its solutions to enterprise needs and TMC needs.”
Goldenberg said he sees the future of TMC in working with “an orchestra of small, specialized AI agents” that can handle specific tasks, such as AgentAI for travel, but also others with specific functions, such as restaurant reservations. tool. However, he said human agents will still play a vital role.
“With our level of knowledge today, AI cannot handle all use cases,” he said. “You’re always going to have those edge cases, complex itineraries and clients who really need the white-glove treatment or need an agent to go the extra mile. There’s still room for human agents to do that and provide that differentiated experience [one] TMC from other people. “
