SEOUL, Nov. 14 (Korea Bizwire) – A portmanteau of “chat” and “robot”, chatbots are computer programs designed to simulate human conversation in both spoken speech and text format. With the seemingly inevitable advent of artificial intelligence approaching nearer by the day, South Korean airlines, entertainment and banking industry players are taking measures to get ahead of the curve by introducing the technology, albeit in limited doses.
Asiana Airlines and Jin Air, a low-cost carrier, have in consecutive days announced that it will begin using a chatbot to provide customer service for select topics. Asiana’s service, developed using Microsoft’s cloud server Azure and its Language Understanding Intelligent Service (LUIS), will be available on its Facebook and KakaoTalk profiles, while Jin Air will showcase its chatbot’s capabilities through its Facebook and Skype accounts.
Entertainment company CJ E&M was a step ahead of the airlines in announcing their chatbot for TV channel tvN on November 10 (Asiana’s launch was on Nov. 13, Jin Air on Nov. 14). The subsidiary of CJ Group joined hands with tech startup DreamYoungs Inc and established a consortium in early 2017 to build their own specialized chatbot.
The emergence of chatbots in the banking industry was begun by Nonghyup Bank last November, after which a slew of fellow competitors, among them Woori Bank and KEB Exchange Bank, followed suit this year. Shinhan and Kookmin Bank are slated to release their respective versions next February and August, respectively.
Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)
How about chatbots as being an always-on customer service agents? Maximizing sales and profitability in this competitive world of automobile industry sales is being driven more by customer service. With Customer Service being a key differentiator in attracting new customers, deepening relationships with existing ones and increasing service revenues and what could be better than chatbot. We at Engati, have started this evolutionary journey of intelligent bots. Do visit us and provide us with your valuable feedback at http://www.engati.com as we strive for more mainstream acceptance of this technology of the future.