• Alex Delivers
• During the 2010 volcano eruption in Iceland, which grounded nearly every airline, Alex was able to meet a 57% increase in user demand without even breaking a sweat.

Customer Profile

Continental Airlines is the world's fifth largest airline. Continental, together with Continental Express and Continental Connection, has more than 2,700 daily departures throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia, serving 132 domestic and 137 international destinations. Continental is a member of Star Alliance, which overall offers more than 21,200 daily flights to 1,172 airports in 181 countries through its 28 member airlines. With more than 40,000 employees, Continental has hubs serving New York, Houston, Cleveland and Guam, and together with its regional partners, carries approximately 63 million passengers per year.

Customer Challenge

In early 2009, this highly-rated airline's website offered an impressive array of features, giving customers online-access to flight information and tools to complete transactions such as booking flights and changing seats.

The site offered so many useful features that customers were having trouble locating the one they needed. So in keeping with its goal of offering the best customer experience possible, Continental sought a way to make its site easier to use. 

The ActiveAgent Solution

To truly understand the needs of Continental and its customers, Next IT completed a comprehensive study of continental.com, mapping the information and services offered and the steps necessary to complete transactions. Continental's subject-matter experts were interviewed. An airline-specific language model was constructed that effectively matched questions asked in natural everyday language to the corresponding information on the airline's website. Then, a conversational interface and Virtual Employee were constructed.

The results have been impressive. "Alex," Continental's Virtual Employee, is able to determine the context in which questions are asked and the customer's true intent. It then guides them directly to the relevant section of Continental's website. If necessary, it can even ask clarifying questions to ensure the right solution is offered.

On an average day, Alex responds to over 20,000 customer inquiries. During the recent Icelandic volcano eruption that disrupted air travel worldwide, Alex responded to more than 100,692 questions per day without missing a beat. And as of her first birthday (July 28, 2010), Alex had answered well over 8 million questions.

Going beyond direct interaction with customers, Alex is also an incredibly useful tool for Continental's customer service representatives, allowing them to offer faster, more consistent answers to callers.

Continental and Next IT continue to refine Alex's knowledge and language model, continually improving the customer experience she provides.

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