Air New Zealand Expands Service Options with Google Assistant

Air New Zealand has become the first airline in Australasia to launch on Google Assistant.

Travellers can now ask Air New Zealand about a range of topics via Google Assistant, including check-in and baggage limits.

Air New Zealand is also looking at further developing the Google Assistant capability so that customers could sign in to a booking or check their Airpoints account and more.

Air New Zealand Chief Digital Officer Avi Golan, said, "Voice is a growing channel and therefore it's important that we offer this as an option for customers to interact with us. We see voice as playing a particularly useful role on the day of travel, giving customers who may have their hands full with last minute travel preparations, the ability to check travel information without having to manually look it up on a device."

The airline has been increasingly experimenting with Artificial Intelligence. Its chatbot Oscar has been assisting customers with commonly asked flight, baggage, lounge and Airpoints queries since his introduction in February. His performance has steadily improved with every interaction and today he as an average of 900 conversations per day with customers and boasts a conversation success rate of more than 70%.

"Our Google Assistant app is backed by the same in-house developed Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology that powers our chatbot Oscar and we've applied learnings and insights gleaned from Oscar's introduction to build our Google Assistant offering," Mr Golan said. 

The Google Assistant is available across devices, including on eligible Android 6.0+ and iPhones, Android TVs and smart speakers like Google Home (in Australia).

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