Case study: AI and human touch for customer experience in tourism

How can AI and human support create a positive impact on a hospitality and tourism company's customer service? Why does INGO make personalization one of its strengths when it comes to its customers?

In this Case Study we are going to analyze how INGO was able to meet the needs of a client in the tourism field, who was looking for an innovative approach to customer care.
Using its experience in the contact center field, combined with artificial intelligence technologies, INGO created a cutting-edge project that is constantly evolving and transforming according to the client company’s requirements.

Who is the client company

Customer INGO is a well-known chain of holiday resorts, marked by the concept of contact with nature, sea and beach.
Founded in the 1970s, the company now has 23 vacation villages in various parts of Italy with attention to every detail, with thousands of comfortable lodges and bungalows, cozy apartments, large water parks, entertainment for young and old, services for four-legged friends and large private and equipped beaches.
In these 50 years, however, the values have remained the same: love of nature, freedom and sociability, authenticity and kindness.

What were the client’s needs

The company had long ago realized the importance of having a customer service department that could best handle customer inquiries, so it was looking for an external partner to whom it could entrust the management of its user contacts.

For what reason was INGO contacted.

The client contacted INGO in 2023: having its registered office in Forli, where INGO also has one of its facilities, it was almost natural to choose a contact center where it was possible to follow the start-up activity closely, directly.

What were the needs of the company?

The company wanted to partner with a vendor who had an innovative and experienced approach to the world of customer care, with a more cutting-edge perspective, to achieve adequate and quality support for its customers, while not deviating from its founding values.

What services did he need and what were the goals set?

The INGO client was looking for a company to take charge of its customer service, through the voice channel, with the goal of supporting its customers more through a structured and tailored service.

What INGO achieved

• After an initial approach in the summer of 2023 marked by the implementation of classic customer care, through the voice channel with human support, the overflow booking and reception service was added a year later, in May 2024.
  Following what had been put in place previously, we began to reason based on the analysis of the data obtained.
  
• It was realized that many of the requests made to operators were recurring, and did not necessarily need human interaction. Therefore, INGO began to structure an AI-based automation project., which, in addition to providing a high-level customer experience, could achieve economic savings for handling purely generic info calls.
  
• Another need had also emerged in the meantime, regarding generic information about the pools in the customer’s facilities, which can also be used by those who are not guests of the villages.
  The goal at this point was to create a vertical test on AI to handle the information request.
  So in July 2024, at the height of the holiday season, a beta testing was carried out with an AI-based info support system, either using a bot and with generative AI, in one of the vacation villages.

This was followed very closely, both INGO and customer side, to understand what the reaction of the users would be and how to then go about optimizing the service, if necessary.
A very clear picture emerged: 30 percent of the calls received on the voice channel, were aimed at general inquiries.

These calls represented a strategic area on which to focus efforts to educate artificial intelligence to handle them effectively through a BOT. The goal was to automate the response to information requests, thus relieving operators of these routine interactions.

The results achieved

Traditional customer care, booking, and reception overflow services allow for an efficient and professional approach with customers.
At the same time, with the introduction of AI to handle repetitive calls with generic inquiries, these results were achieved:

• 36% of calls handled by AI, leading to service efficiency, with shorter wait times and workload on operators redistributed, giving them the ability to focus on more complex tasks.
• -70% compared to costs from human-operated management, with an economic saving that is certainly significant.

The goal for 2025 is to extend automation to all 23 villages, and to deepen analysis to see what other areas of the service can be applied to support operators with artificial intelligence.

Conclusioni

From the data that emerged and the path analyzed in this use case, it is clear that even in the tourism sector, cutting-edge customer service using a combination of traditional human support and technologies with automation and AI is a winning choice. Relying on a partner like INGO not only allows you to streamline your customer journey processes, but at the same time creates opportunities for economic savings while not sacrificing the quality perceived by your customers.