The challenge

As AirAsia grew in popularity, so did the number of brand interactions. Without a self-service solution, guests were forced to wait almost one hour to reach an agent—putting the brand’s reputation at risk.

Even moreso, by relying on call centres working within local hours and languages, AirAsia was missing out on opportunities to create new connections and drive new sales with international audiences. 

Before Ada:

• Live agent support available on website and through call centre
• Agents overwhelmed by the volume of international interactions
• 45-minute customer wait time
• Voice call centre support hours limited to APAC hours

Automating with Ada

AirAsia was eager to make its customer service better and faster, so Ada was chosen as part of a new strategy to scale automated support across multiple channels. AirAsia used Ada’s platform to build and launch a 24/7 multilingual chatbot ready to assist customers instantly across the brand’s website and app. Connecting Ada with the business’ back-end allowed customers to use the chatbot to:

• Check flight updates
• Book flights
• Answer key questions about the AirAsia experience
• Update passenger information, and
• Add ancillary products to bookings

After only one month of using Ada s automation as their first line of support, AirAsia decreased the average wait time to less than one minute — an improvement of 98%.

After Ada:

• 75% of all brand interactions solved without a live agent
• CSAT improved from 60% to  90%
• Less than 1 minute customer wait times
• 8x increase in ancillary product up-sell/cross-sell
• Support available in eleven languages
• All voice call centres closing by end of 2019
• New channels including Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp

Building automation in weeks, without a dependence on IT

Led by Ada’s Automated Customer Experience (ACX) Consultants, members of AirAsia’s non-technical support team were provided with resources to successfully launch and manage AI-powered automation. In less than a month, the team built a customized chatbot with rich content, including images, videos, and GIFs. 

The team deployed the bot for instant website support, as well as Facebook, WhatsApp, and WeChat. With Ada’s multilingual capabilities, AirAsia automates experiences in English and then deploys them to guests in 11 languages: English, Bahasa Malaysia, Bahasa Indonesia, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese, Tagalog, Hindi and Korean.

Supporting guests on-the-go

Guests can use the chatbot to access real-time flight status, update passenger information, book flights, and add ancillary products to a booking on their own. When a human touch is required, customers are seamlessly routed from instant chat to live agents within the Salesforce Service Cloud.

Understanding the customer journey

With over 20 million interactions annually, Ada’s automation is providing new data to understand and improve the customer experience.