Delighting young travelers with automated support

Customer Story
For young people in the European Union (EU) who love to travel, the DiscoverEU program is like a dream come true. The program offers 18-year-old residents of EU member states an opportunity to see the continent via train. But the launch of the DiscoverEU program came with a lot of support requirements.
Helping travelers with automated support

Overview

Challenge: Support a large number of young travelers on journeys throughout Europe
Solution: A chatbot to answer FAQs or transfer to live agents if necessary
Results: 24/7 automated support across Europe
 

>80%

of incoming requests handled by the bot
 

24/7

support for traveler queries

3K

requests per month handled by the bot

Company

European Commission

Product

Industries

Travel

Country

European Union

Challenge: supporting young travelers across Europe

DiscoverEU is an initiative led by the European Commission (EC) that helps 18-year-old EU citizens discover Europe by train. Many are inexperienced, first-time travelers who sometimes need immediate help if they've missed a train, had a schedule change, etc. 

Supporting these travelers is costly, and staffing a large team of agents outside traditional office hours and across different time zones is challenging.

 

Solution: a real-time bot with live agent hand-off

To guarantee affordable, real-time support for young travelers, the European Commission worked with Sinch to develop a chatbot to answer the most commonly asked questions. 

With the implementation partner Campfire the European Commission created and launched the chatbot based on the AI product Chatlayer by Sinch . Campire supported here with its team of conversational designers, Natural Language Processing (NLP) experts, and IT professionals. 

Image of a chatbot

 

Results: 24/7/365 support across Europe

The chatbot surpassed even the best expectations. In the first month alone, it solved 700+ questions and handed over around 150 questions to a live support agent. The chatbot now answers more than 80% of incoming requests, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all year round.