Meet Amanda, the Amadeus chatbot that has everyone talking

It’s summer, and this means a busy time for travel agencies around the world. A family of four just walked into a travel agency excited about their next family holiday. They sit down in front of the agent, describe their dream holiday and the agent gets to work. But all of a sudden, in the middle of booking a trip, the agent finds themselves stuck on one detail. “How do I make that special meal request again?” All their colleagues in the agency are busy, and the customer can only be patient for so long. So, what do they do? 

The agent turns to Amanda on their chat window, and immediately, gets an answer. 

“Just type SRVGML in a PNR on the command page,” she says.

Amanda, our travel agency chatbot, is a busy customer service agent, and she´s quickly becoming popular. On the average day she answers more than 1000 questions from travel agents, or about 120 conversations an hour. 

So why do we need a chatbot? We found that 88% of questions coming in are service requests, and out of these requests, more than 70% are simple and recurring “how to” questions with easy and fast answers. Based on this, we wanted to make the whole process of getting those answers easier for customers. 

A chatbot like Amanda, that is open to all agencies, dynamic enough to answer a range of questions, and connected 24/7 was the perfect solution. Being open, dynamic, and connected is part of our wider vision to create a Live Travel Space  for our customers to access the expertise and technology – and chatbots - they need to achieve success.

That's where Amanda comes in. She allows us to provide immediate assistance and useful tips 24/7, so that Amadeus travel agents don't have to pick up the phone mid-booking if they´re stuck.

So far, it seems that Amanda is a hit and her popularity is growing.  Amanda is now available in more than 80 countries.

And what about those cases that Amanda can’t handle? The customer service experts are here to help. The Amanda chatbot allows our customer service experts to concentrate on more complex issues and the provision of value-added services. Meanwhile, thanks to ma-chine learning and artificial intelligence, Amanda will only continue to improve her perfor-mance over time. 

Mishell Garcia from Holidays FCM Travel Ecuador says, “Amanda is a very dynamic and agile tool that adapts to our work rhythm. She is very helpful with our daily questions. One feature to highlight is the option to get additional details and examples about how to use one specific entry in a graphic way. Moreover, Amanda provides related questions in case you want to deep dive in one specific topic. Amanda is a tremendous help for us”.

Roxana Lascentre from Sunny Tours in Argentina agrees, “Amanda helps us with simple questions anytime without having to contact help desk by phone. Sometimes we need to play with different words to get the most appropriate answer according to our needs. She is dynamic and fast, you only require the time that you take to write your question in the chat window.”

Amanda is already chatting with travel agents in Latin America, Portugal, New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific Islands, Scandinavia, Southern Africa, East Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Malaysia, Spain, the Philippines, and most recently, the UK and Ireland. 

She's looking forward to reaching more Amadeus customers around the world soon. Amanda is now learning new languages, and she will soon be integrated in the Amadeus Service Hub  (our customer service portal) and other Amadeus solutions. 

So, if you’re a travel agent, keep your eyes open for that chat window at the bottom right-hand side of your screen. And don't be shy, say hello. You might be surprised, she's quite a chatterbox.