As airlines gear up for a bustling spring break, this industry is no stranger to the challenges that come with a busy travel season: surging customer inquiries, the need to rapidly onboard customer service reps (CSRs), and mounting pressure to deliver hyper-personalized experiences. While these types of travel spikes often result in airlines delivering poor service experiences that can wreak havoc on brand reputations, there are tools and best practices airlines can put in place to help ensure this isn't the outcome.
Next-generation artificial intelligence simulated training, coupled with the right overall AI tech strategy, can transform these challenges into new opportunities. This helps airlines differentiate themselves in a crowded industry with challenging reputational issues, all while enabling airlines to manage a rapidly changing regulatory environment.
The spring break rush, for example, is a perfect storm for service teams. In addition to being synonymous with a significant increase in travel, spring break can also come with possible issues, such as lost baggage, long wait times, scheduling changes, and weather-related travel delays/cancellations. This all means there's potential for even more complaints.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, complaints currently make up 91 percent of all consumer inquiries to airlines. While traditional digital channels, such as AI chatbots, mobile apps, and web self-service, can resolve a portion of these customer complaints, airlines are often forced to hire new or temporary CSRs to cope with the surge in complaints and demand.
Hiring new CSRs often results in a rushed onboarding process that can lead to inconsistent service quality as new hires have not necessarily fully acclimated to their service roles. New CSRs are flooded with potential complaints while also having to manage unfamiliar technology and processes. At the same time, balancing efficiency and high service quality becomes a critical challenge for airlines.
As customer expectations continue to rise, CSRs of all levels and tenures need the right tools at their fingertips to deliver exceptional service. It's no longer enough to just handle customer inquiries; it's paramount to surpass expectations to build long-term brand loyalty and trust.
At the same time, there's a lot of noise about generative AI tools right now, but next-generation generative AI customer service simulators have the potential to revolutionize how airlines prepare their CSRs during peak travel seasons and throughout the year. These types of AI-powered training tools offer risk-free environments where CSRs can practice handling a variety of customer interactions in a realistic service desktop. Instead of relying on static scripts or role-playing scenarios, CSRs can now interact with AI-generated customers that present a wide range of situations and emotion states.
These simulators can create thousands of unique customer interaction scenarios, each adapting in real time to the CSRs' responses. These systems provide immediate feedback and coaching advice, helping CSRs perfect their approach to various situations, including managing delays/cancellations, processing complex rebooking requests, addressing special accommodation needs, resolving loyalty program inquiries, and handling frustrated customers. Not only do CSRs see massive benefits from using this technology, these simulators can also send reports directly to managers so that they can better tailor their one-on-one coaching.
This technology dramatically accelerates onboarding time while significantly improving the quality of customer interactions. New CSRs can gain months of experience in just weeks, making them better prepared to handle real and potentially stressful situations, even in peak travel seasons.
The benefits of investing in a sound AI strategy extends beyond training. While gen AI simulators excel in training and supporting airline employees, agentic AI can take customer service even further by providing autonomous experiences that work alongside human CSRs. When governed and orchestrated across workflows, these AI agents can understand context, make independent decisions, and execute complex tasks without constant human oversight. Agentic AI systems can proactively identify potential issues before they affect customers, automate process and approvals, such as seat changes or meal preferences, and coordinate with multiple departments to resolve issues. Not only does this enhance the quality of service, it also boosts employee satisfaction and retention by reducing pressure on CSRs.
Investing in agentic AI also better prepares airlines to adapt to new regulations and customer demands. This ensures that whether customers are reaching out via self-service or assisted channels, they receive customer care that is timely, relevant, and empathetic.
By combining gen AI simulators with AI agents, airlines can transform their customer service operations from a potential pain point to a competitive advantage. These technologies not only help weather seasonal storms but also build lasting improvements in service quality, employee satisfaction, and operational efficiency.
As we look to the future, the airlines that thrive will strategically integrate these AI technologies into their customer service ecosystems. The result? Better prepared employees, happier customers, and more resilient operations ready to handle whatever challenges the busy travel season brings.
Rebecca Miller is senior product strategy manager in the customer service and sales automation division at Pegasystems.