Helping a Railroad Conduct Business
Ask Julie gives Amtrak travelers instant service while delivering impressive results
Customer Challenge
Founded in 1971 and headquartered in Washington, D.C.’s Union Station, Amtrak employs more than 20,000 people, operates over 300 passenger trains on 21,000 miles of track and carries over 30-million passengers per year to destinations in 46 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and three Canadian provinces.
With more travelers booking tickets online than by any other method, Amtrak wanted to make it an even easier experience for their website’s 375,000+ daily visitors.
They sought a solution that would provide all website visitors instant access to online self-service, giving them answers to their questions and assistance with transactions without having to call or email a representative.
The Ask Julie Customer Experience
In 2012, Amtrak engaged Next IT to develop and implement a world-class virtual assistant to engage and serve their customers in a scalable manner. Ask Julie, an intelligent virtual assistant (IVA) on Amtrak.com, was designed to function like Amtrak’s best customer service representative – electronically, of course.
With Julie, waiting for service is a thing of the past, as she’s easily capable of simultaneously serving the needs of every Amtrak.com visitor. Travelers can book rail travel by simply stating where and when they’d like to travel. Julie assists them by prefilling forms on Amtrak’s scheduling tool and providing guidance through the rest of the booking process.
And, of course, she’s easily capable of providing information on what items can be carried on trains or helping make hotel and rental-car reservations.
The Alme Platform Solution
With experience creating and delivering intelligent conversational solutions for major travel providers and other Fortune 500 companies, Next IT’s digital solutions and professional services teams designed a brand experience that ensured Julie’s knowledge and capabilities were perfectly matched to the needs of Amtrak and its customers.
AI is No Longer a New Technology, It’s Your Business
The future of business is a conversation with a machine that earns your trust. Whether you want to engage customers in more meaningful interactions that support their goals, or aid an employee in search of data, these conversational interactions will permeate every level of engagement with your business.
Intelligent interfaces like IVAs are essential to keeping pace with machine accelerated productivity in every industry, which is why we’ve designed IVAs to support your business goals.