Air India's AI assistant answers millions of passenger questions
Passenger numbers doubled, but call-centre volume stayed flat. Here's how a generative AI assistant made that possible.
By the DigitalHelp4U team ·
After the Tata Group took over Air India and placed a large aircraft order in 2022, the airline expected its passenger numbers to grow fast. Its old virtual assistant was outdated, and hiring enough call-centre staff to keep up would have been expensive.
What they built
In May 2023 Air India launched AI.g, a generative AI assistant built on Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service. It answers questions about bookings, flight status, baggage, check-in and loyalty points by drawing on the airline's own systems, and hands over to a human agent when needed.
The results (as reported by Microsoft, November 2024)
- Nearly 4 million customer queries handled, across about 1,300 topics.
- 97% of sessions fully automated.
- Passenger numbers doubled since early 2022 while contact-centre calls stayed at roughly the same daily level.
- Savings described as several million dollars a year in support costs.
What any business can learn
- Connect AI to your real data. The assistant is useful because it can check actual bookings, not just recite FAQs.
- Always offer a human. Escalation to staff keeps trust high.
- Grow without growing costs at the same rate. That is the real business case, beyond saving time.
How we would apply it
For a clinic, institute or service business, we connect an AI assistant to your appointment calendar, price list and order system on WhatsApp and your website, with a one-tap handover to your team.
Sources
- Microsoft customer story: Air India and Azure OpenAI Service (2024)
- IndiaAI: Air India becomes the world's first airline to deploy a generative AI virtual agent
Figures are as reported by the sources above at the time of publication.
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