Finnair has launched its first artificially intelligent chatbot for the airline’s global Facebook Messenger account.
The chatbot, called Finn, is able to sell flights, give flight times and calculate how much baggage can be taken on-board. It can also direct passengers to the airline’s “Manage My Booking” page, where they can add more services to a booking, as well as answering frequently asked questions. If an answer can’t be found, the message will be passed on to a human customer service agent.
Vice president of distribution at Finnair, Rogier van Enk, said:
“Exploiting artificial intelligence is an integral part of our transformation strategy. We are growing and we constantly look for new ways to improve our customer service and developing new sales channels using new distribution capability technology.”
“We believe that fast developing digital tools will greatly benefit our customers. Finn understands and communicates in English, but later it will learn more languages and functionalities. Finnish and Chinese are coming up this year. After the initial stage, Finnair is looking to find a home for Finn also in other social media platforms such as Wechat in China.”
The airline says that “Finn” is the most technologically advanced new distribution capability (NDC) solution in the aviation sector, because it offers the possibility to book flights across the whole network, as well as hosting content like videos and images on the messaging service. It has been developed together with Caravelo, a solutions company for the airline industry.
The airline has also recently launched discounted fares from the UK to Japan from £529 return, which can be booked until September 12.
