New Delhi: On Friday, In a statement the airline said that Air India has become the world's first airline to successfully deploy a Generative AI virtual agent 'Maharaja'. The project was introduced in the testing phase in March 2023. The agent is powered by Microsoft's Azure OpenAI service.
New Delhi: On Friday, In a statement the airline said that Air India has become the world’s first airline to successfully deploy a Generative AI virtual agent ‘Maharaja’. The project was introduced in the testing phase in March 2023.
The agent is powered by Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI service. Air India claims that Maharaja has answered over half a million customer queries and currently handles more than 6,000 queries per day in four languages: Hindi, English, French, and German.
Maharaja manages a wide range of customer queries across 1,300 areas, including flight status, baggage allowances, packing restrictions, check-in procedures, frequent flyer awards, airport lounge access, flight changes, and refunds. The airline, owned by the Tata Group, is utilising ChatGPT to analyse even complex questions that it may not be able to immediately answer.
This approach aims to enhance customer experience in subsequent interactions and helps the virtual agent become more attuned to natural language. Of the 6,000-plus questions received each day, over 80% are successfully answered in seconds.
In a statement,Authority said,”Of the 6,000-plus questions received each day, over 80 per cent are successfully answered in seconds. About 15 per cent of customer queries today require additional assistance, and Maharaja recognises this automatically and orchestrates a seamless handoff to Air India’s contact centre agents.”
Satya Ramaswamy, Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Air India said that after the emergence of Large Language Model-driven generative AI capabilities, it is increasingly seeing a definitive shift in guest preferences to use chat interactions to get the information and support they need quickly.
Dr. Satya Ramaswamy, Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Air India, said,”We are dedicated to providing the best possible service and experience to our valued guests across channels. We also want to be very responsive to their changing preferences. After the emergence of Large Language Model-driven Generative AI capabilities, we are increasingly seeing a definitive shift in guest preferences to use chat interactions to get the information and support they need quickly and directly as compared to browsing several web pages,” he said.
In the coming months, the airline plans to launch a host of sophisticated features, driven by patent-pending technologies. Generative AI solutions employed by Air India are instrumental in automating repetitive and mundane tasks like booking, cancellation, and confirmation. This automation allows human agents to allocate their bandwidth to more complex and value-adding interactions. Air India, as a full-service carrier, is currently pursuing an ambitious expansion plan.
Marco Casalaina, Vice President, AI Platform, Microsoft said,“We are pleased to see Air India’s successful deployment of their AI-powered agent, Maharaja, and the use of Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to provide a personalized and relevant customer experience. We believe that this is the beginning of a new era of customer service, and we look forward to seeing more organizations use the power of Generative AI and our AI-optimized Azure cloud to provide a seamless and efficient customer experience.”
