HotelPlanner AI: Call handlers with the human touch
HotelPlanner’s new call handler team are not your average AI bots answering simple, stock questions.
Having used eight million recorded phone calls made by human call center agents, the firm’s AI powered customer agents are as human as the tech gets.
In fact, HotelPlanner says many customers don’t even realize they’re not actually speaking to a human. During its first month, the AI powered team has handled about 40,000 inquiries.
UK newspaper The Times tested the service to see whether artificial intelligence compared with real time human interactions. Its initial reaction – there was no discernable indication that AI bot Cassandra wasn’t a real person.
The service is as advanced as it gets; Cassandra and the other AI entities can make recommendations, check for room availability, quote prices, and give room type explanations with ease. Its quite a feat with 1.4 million hotels on its site.
Overall, HotelPlanner has created 20 AI agents able to converse in 15 languages. There are two specific AI characters which have gained media attention. One is called Santa for the festive season, while another is called Donnie.
The latter promises to make a stay in America great (again) complete with similar verbal mannerisms of the President-elect. The Times staffer’s interaction with Donnie went as follows:
“This hotel is great, it’s tremendous, absolutely tremendous … it’s a beautiful thing, believe me.”
“How many nights would you like to make America — I mean make your stay — great?”
HotelPlanner’s CEO Tim Hentschel, said the volume of : calls has doubled since the AI platform fully rolled out.
“This year we’ve had to curtail the capacity on our site, when fewer call handlers were available, but now we can now scale much faster,” he said.
“We have calls recorded of people saying ‘Hey, James, will you be at the hotel when I get there?’, who responds, ‘Sorry, no — I’m an automated agent’.”
Of course, sometimes an inquiry is too nuanced or complex for AI, such as ‘Does your breakfast have poached eggs?’ In that case we’ll transfer the call either direct to the hotel or to one of our human agents,” Hentschel added.
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TravelMole Editorial Team
Editor for TravelMole North America and Asia pacific regions. Ray is a highly experienced (15+ years) skilled journalist and editor predominantly in travel, hospitality and lifestyle working with a huge number of major market-leading brands. He has also cover in-depth news, interviews and features in general business, finance, tech and geopolitical issues for a select few major news outlets and publishers.
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