GoSee, the global travel eCommerce business and a Webjet company, is relying more and more on their intelligent digital agent, powered by conversational AI from Ambit, to engage with international customers as it rebuilds from the pandemic. GoSee’s digital employee, Scout, enables customers to self-serve more of their booking journey for rental cars and motorhomes, allowing contact centre agents to focus on more complex queries.
Launched in July 2021, Scout now handles almost 4,000 conversations a month on behalf of GoSee’s three brands, representing 20% to 30% of all customer queries. Multilingual from day one, Scout now supports customers in English, Korean, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Mandarin.
GoSee experienced major revenue declines during 2020 and 2021, leading to a significant reduction in its customer service team. However customer service demands skyrocketed as the pandemic disrupted travel plans, placing pressure on contact centre staff as they processed refunds and cancellations.
GoSee deployed Scout initially to manage the immediate call volumes, 24/7, but with a view to prepare itself to capture pent up global demand once travel restrictions eased. Learning as it goes, Ambit’s conversational AI platform is helping GoSee continually expand its online support, and in time will offer sales functionality.
“Conversational AI and automation are central to our digital strategy of improving the user experience for customers and supporting our customer service team. Since launching our digital employee less than a year ago, Scout has been continually learning, improving its proficiency in answering queries, and doing so in language that is consistent with GoSee’s quirky brand,” says Richard Fuli, GoSee’s Chief Customer Operating Officer.
Scout’s multilingual ability offers GoSee greater capability to converse with its global customers. Over 60% of Scout’s conversations occur outside 9am and 5pm, with a spike between 2am and 3am, reflecting queries from international customers. Previously GoSee relied on recruiting language skills among its contact centre staff in locations including Romania and the Philippines who had to be rostered to cover relevant timezones.
“Our Conversational AI platform proved itself during a particularly challenging period when GoSee’s contact centre team faced a high volume of calls, fast, but needed the time to focus on answering the most complex queries. Scout is now helping rebuild GoSee’s capability as customers discover again the joys of travelling to New Zealand and Australia,” says Tim Warren, Ambit’s co-founder and CEO.
On average, the contact centre receives 300-400 calls a day from customers who have relatively simple questions preventing them from completing an online booking. GoSee’s own customer surveys show that Scout provides a better experience for customers who want to quickly find the information they need. Younger customers in particular prefer not to speak to a human agent.
Formerly known as Online Republic, and operating motorhomes and car rentals as two separate websites, the business re-branded in October 2021, launching all cars and motorhomes content on one easy-to-use website under the GoSee name.
