Millennial-geared tour operator Contiki has ramped up efforts to invest in smarter technology with the launch of its own chatbot, “Tiki” on Facebook Messenger.
Launched end of January, the chatbot is designed to help users (and agents) better understand which of the eight Contiki “travel styles” they best fall under, based on their interests and motivations for any given trip. The eight ‘styles’ are the brand’s method of targeting and catering to “the diverse and fragmented millennial audience” that Contiki caters to.
In an attempt to impart a “quirky and relevant” brand voice through chat, Tiki asks customers a series of set questions (about personality, travel preferences and tastes), sprinkled with a mix of pop culture and popular meme references. This “bot banter” is hoped to drive user engagement by making the new service a source of entertainment.
To develop Tiki, Contiki collaborated with bot-creating platform, Chatfeul, which specialises in creating “off the shelf solutions” for Facebook Messenger driven chatbots.
Working closely with the company, Contiki was able to develop the logic and conversation ‘rails’ that users can follow, to determine their ‘travel style’.
Ezekiel Chew, Director of Sales & Marketing, Contiki Asia
However that is the full extent of Tiki’s current functionality. In a statement, Contiki asserted it “is acutely aware of the human necessity when it comes to destination knowledge, customer service, and booking handling that can only be provided by agents.“ It dispels the notion that the company might be leaning towards greater automation when engaging with customers directly.
“Tiki is not meant to replace a travel agent or any of our representatives,” said Ezekiel Chew (Director of Sales & Marketing, Asia, Contiki). “It’s more of a pre-screening process for anyone who wants to research what travel styles we have and which exact trip they should be on.
“If they come onto our website, we have a tremendous amount of trips,” so Tiki can help direct users to trips most relevant to them more efficiently, avoiding overwhelming customers with too much choice.
“Our Tiki bot is at its very first stage, so along the way we’ll constantly upgrade it… but it’s the first introduction step,” between customers and the brand, said Chew.
For more complex enquiries or random that are directed at Tiki, it utilises Google Dialogflow (the same machine-learning software that runs Google Assistant) to give natural language responses and redirect the conversation back to the line of original questioning.
One challenge that Contiki will have to anticipate is how it can stay relevant and ‘on-trend’ when conversing with its customers. As millennials get older and the next generation of young travellers take its place, anticipating new methods of styles of conversing will be critical to Tiki’s long-term success.
What it can establish is its ‘cheeky’ tone of voice that has associated with the brand over time. “It represents who we are [as a brand], fun and energetic. So, we want to make the research booking process part of helping customers understand who we are, which category is the best fit, etc.” said Chew.
When asked why Contiki did not immediately plan to use Tiki to promote instant bookability, Chew explained that customers still favour having “conversations with a human” to hash out the complexities that come with booking a travel itinerary.
“We still get a good number of direct bookings but we understand a lot of people still want the human touch.” In the grander scheme of things, plans for Tiki are still being determined as Chew explains that Contiki still aims to be “humanly defined.”
With regards to improving Tiki’s natural language processing skills, Chew affirmed that because Contiki will limit the bot’s functionality to identifying traveller types, it wants to make sure customers are always aware that they are simply interacting with a bit of software. For that reason, Chew said there are no immediate plans to devote significant resources to develop this capability.
“Tiki comes in at the first stage, pre-engagement. Then our representatives and partners can come in and guide them on what to expect, so we can take it all from there… We will not try to act like there is a human behind it.”
Nevertheless, Tiki can eventually help to provide useful insights on which traveller types and itineraries are becoming increasingly popular amongst its cohort. Thus, Tiki can serve as a new research tool to get a deeper understanding of how its key demographic interacts with the brand.
Photo credit: Getty images & Contiki
