Qantas has launched Qantas Concierge, a Facebook Messenger bot that gives customers in the United Kingdom personalised travel inspiration.

Following a successful roll-out in Australia in February, the launch of the bot in the UK forms part of Qantas’ strategy to give customers faster responses and more relevant information through easily accessible channels.

Kristin Carlos, Qantas head of digital and entertainment said Qantas Concierge is an evolution of the airlines customer communications, boosting the airline’s presence on a hugely popular social media platform while offering immediate travel solutions.

“We recognise that different people want to communicate with us in different ways.

“With around 35 million people on Facebook in the United Kingdom, growing our presence with the social networking service makes sense,” Carlos said.

Through Qantas Concierge, customers can access sale information and destination inspiration in line with their interests, whether that be beach destinations or amazing Airbnbs around the world.

Learning from customer interactions and conversations, Qantas’ new Artificial Intelligence backed service will become more user friendly and effective over time, making it an increasingly powerful customer service tool for the airline. 

Since launching, more than 150,000 users have interacted with the bot within Facebook Messenger.

Throughout 2017 Qantas plans to grow the chat bots capability to offer a full suite of concierge services including operational notifications such as itineraries, flight and gate change updates and boarding passes.

Qantas Concierge will ultimately become another support channel for customers complementing the airlines suite of call centres and social media response teams.

Paul McCrory, group industry director at Facebook Australia & New Zealand, who has led the bot development with Qantas, said: “Facebook’s partners are a community of best-in-class companies who are looking for innovative means to talk to their customers and new audiences.

“Qantas is always exploring new ways to evolve its customer communication, we look forward to collaborating with them on exciting new projects and pioneering new ground in this space.”