How Aegean Taxi is using AI to drive better customer support

Q: Can you walk us through your journey with implementing AI? 

At the beginning, we weren't entirely sure what these AI solutions could do. We initially thought it might be a simple, hands-off process where they'd provide the software and leave us to figure it out. However, it turned out to be a completely different experience. 

Bird stood out to us for several reasons. Firstly, they offer the most complete package in terms of add-ons to implement an AI agent. Secondly, they showed genuine passion for building a chatbot for WhatsApp that would act as our taxi booking application. This alignment with our vision was crucial, as the development process involved a fair amount of trial and error.

Perhaps most importantly, the customization options Bird offered were a significant differentiator. We wanted something that we could really tailor to our company's needs. Bird enabled us to build a chatbot that reflected our company’s character and met our specific needs.

Bird assigned us dedicated engineers who were on call throughout the bot-building process. While such a project typically takes around six months to complete, Bird's team resolved our issues within a couple of weeks. They were very responsive and up to speed with our business's requirements.

Q: What does using AI look like in practice now, and what benefits have you experienced from its adoption into Aegean Taxi’s customer support services? 

It's important to understand that implementing AI isn't necessarily a plug-and-play solution. There are infinite possibilities to customize and tailor it to your needs. 

We were looking for a solution that could enhance customer service quality while reducing response time. The results have been impressive. For instance, we've seen significant improvements in our key metrics:

1. First contact to booking: We reduced this from around three minutes to just one minute.

2. Price checking: Previously, when customers wanted to check prices without inputting pick-up and drop-off destinations, they would message us, which used to take about two minutes per conversation. Now, with AI, we've cut price checking down to 45 seconds.

We also saw much of our customer support staff migrate to more value-added roles rather than mundane tasks because AI is handling that now. In a traditional taxi operation, customer support typically deals with answering phones and inputting ride details into a dispatch system. This first level of support involves taking basic information like pick-up and drop-off points, customer name, and phone number. With AI handling these routine tasks now, our customer support team can now focus on higher-value activities. 

They make sure the right driver is assigned to each ride, contact clients to confirm pre-bookings, and proactively inform customers when their taxi is 15 minutes away, for instance, minimizing lost rides.

Moreover, the team can now dedicate more time to analyzing demand patterns. They monitor heat maps to identify high-demand areas and guide drivers accordingly, optimizing our fleet distribution and improving overall service efficiency.

Q: How would you describe your customer experience now? 

The improvements have been substantial. Customers now receive information faster, as our AI agent can respond much quicker than a human agent, handling up to 15 queries every minute. This has significantly decreased wait times.

We also see that the AI chatbots provide even more information than our customer support agents would. As a customer support agent, you aim to minimize the time it takes you to complete a booking, so you keep it short and sweet when communicating with clients. But, AI does not have this limitation. 

Providing more details to the customers definitely led to a higher percentage of completed rides. We’re not only serving customers faster, but we're also providing them with more comprehensive and useful information.