Meet some of the companies that are harnessing the incredible power of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a futuristic concept found in science fiction films – it is today’s technology. The power and capabilities it offers are growing, creating a future filled with possibility.
The potential of AI was showcased at a Microsoft event in London recently. Journalists, scientists and researchers heard from Microsoft spokespeople such as Harry Shum, Executive Vice-President of Microsoft AI and Research Group, and Chris Bishop, Laboratory Director at Microsoft Research Cambridge.
Among the announcements, including Microsoft’s AI for Earth initiative, a number of companies spoke about how they are using the power of AI to drive innovation.
Below is a profile of each company:
Dixons Carphone – one of the UK’s largest electrical retailers – discovered that around 90% of its customers start their shopping journey online, and 65% use their mobile phones to assist them while shopping in the store.
The company, which also owns Currys and PC World, has used Microsoft’s Bot Framework to build an AI bot called Cami into its customer interactions in Facebook Messenger. “It’s amazing how quickly the whole thing came together,” says Antonia Colin-Jones, Strategic Partnership Program Manager, Dixons Carphone.
“We didn’t need to build any special functionality to connect the bot to our product catalogue and stock data – we just used existing feeds. We did spend a fair bit of time deciding on branding and personality for our bot… she’s mildly geeky and quite confident, and she’s there to help customers navigate the world of technology.”
Dixons Carphone programmed Cami with information from its online buying guide and colleague training materials to help guide customers to the right product. The information is already available through the company’s website, but allowing people to interact with her allows them to search for products and have their questions answered in a more natural way.
Dixons Carphone has also built a feature called Wishlist that works with Cami. Customers can add items to a list while shopping online at home, and save the search criteria they used. Staff can then pull that up in the store, see what the customer was looking for, and help direct them to that product or to other products they might like.
Once deployed, analytics from Microsoft will be able to help improve the service further, in a new form of business intelligence. If the majority of customers are, for example, asking very similar questions, it will help improve future communications and messaging.
As the largest Global Distribution Systems provider for airline bookings in North America, Sabre is a key part of millions of journeys across the globe every day. The company, based in Southlake, Texas, powers mobile apps, airport check-in kiosks, online travel websites, airline and hotel reservation networks, travel agent terminals, aircraft and crew scheduling systems, and scores of other solutions.
Sabre has been using Microsoft’s Cognitive Services and Bot Framework to develop a chatbot for travel agencies. Travellers will interact with the bot via Facebook Messenger to address service and support questions related to flight reservations. This frees up staff to deal with more complex issues that customers face.
Thanks to Microsoft’s Language Understanding Intelligent Service, Sabre’s customers can speak to the bots in a conversational way that does not require knowledge of specific commands.
