Facebook Messenger has a new bot, and this one can deliver all your flight info to one thread. The Messenger team has announced that its first airline partner’s, the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines’, bot is up and running in some locations and will be more widely available in the coming days.
To activate this feature, you have to choose to receive info via Messenger when you book tickets through the airline’s website. After activating this feature the bot will then start to send you the itinerary, boarding pass, check-in confirmation, and even the delay notifications. You also get the option to talk to human representatives, just in case the bot is not able to deal with your query.
Also read: Facebook Messenger app for Windows 10 now available in Windows Store
Earlier reports had suggested that Facebook gave select developers access to an SDK for Messenger in order to grow a sleuth of useful chatbots. This is likely one of the products of that combined effort. The disembodied customer service assistants have been a common feature in Asian messaging apps such as WeChat and Line for quite some time now, and their Western counterparts are following suit.
Other companies are also making efforts to join this AI race. Microsoft has recently announced at the Build 2016 conference that a new version of Skype will also feature an artificial intelligence chatbot. In the demo, the company had showcased the easiness by which a person can order a pizza while using the app. The particular upgrade to the Messenger app elevates it into a much more multifunctional service than just a messaging platform, which is how it originally started a couple of years ago.
What are your thoughts on this integration in Facebook Messenger? Will you be making use of the feature? Let us know in the comments below.
