Indian Airline SpiceJet Launches Bilingual Customer Service on Nuance’s Voice AI Platform
Indian airline SpiceJet has launched a new customer service voice AI named Pepper that speaks English and Hindi, a first for the industry. Pepper is built on Nuance’s AI platform and natural language understanding engine for both languages.
Pepper AI
The AI acts as a customer service agent when people call SpiceJet. Pepper relies entirely on voice without any menu or number touchpads necessary. Callers tell Pepper what they want help with, and the AI guides them through a series of follow-up questions to answer their queries from a database of responses or works out which human customer service agent would be best to help resolve any unaddressed concerns. The conversation begins with asking what language the caller prefers and proceeds in Hindi or English based on what the caller says. The whole call is designed to be more efficient, shorter, and more helpful to the growing number of callers that SpiceJet has been fielding.
“At SpiceJet, more and more customers are reaching out via voice channels for service— whether it’s for flight enquiries, bookings or cancellations, or flight status. Recognizing this shift in consumer preferences, we created Pepper, which is built on a technology provided by Nuance that understands a customer’s query and steers the conversation to provide a quick and relevant response,” SpiceJet CMO Debojo Maharshi said in a statement. ” Now, customer satisfaction is measurably increasing. We’re already looking for ways to expand Pepper’s capabilities to address more customer needs and free up our human agents to provide more specific support related to our specialist service, SpiceMax.”
Nuanced Enterprise
Demand for Nuance’s technology has continued to climb this year, fueling surges in stock prices and extending the company’s client list. Enterprise services like the one offered to SpiceJet brought in 4% more revenue from the previous year, according to the end-of-year investor report from Nuance, the fifth straight year of growth for the sector. The new addition to India’s airline customer service complements the rest of the year’s new products and expansions, partly because the COVID-19 health crisis is reducing in-person customer interactions in favor of phone calls and text communication. That’s part of why the Albertsons grocery chain started using Nuance to help online shoppers. Clients can even design their own AI virtual assistant using the Nuance Mix toolkit introduced in the spring. The set of software doesn’t require technical knowledge to use and can generate a customer service bot or connect employees to coordinate their projects. For more complex language and AI needs, though, the custom-built voice AI Nuance built with SpiceJet is still the go-to.
“People want to engage brands in the same way they communicate with friends, family, and colleagues, and the voice channel is starting to be their preferred choice in India,” said Nuance senior vice president of intelligent engagement Tony Lorentzen. “Our AI technology enables natural conversational experience by understanding what the customer is saying, processing that intent, and providing the bridge to either a resolution or the right live person to help get to one. We are pleased to be partnering with SpiceJet for the roll-out of Pepper voice bot and congratulate them for being first in their field with this kind of application.”
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