With advances in artificial intelligence, it is easier to imagine the emergence of an intelligent travel assistant with whom it would be possible to converse at every stage. What is SNCF Connect & Tech’s vision on the subject? We met Caroline Chupin, Head of Product in the SNCF Connect & Tech Products department, during Viva Tech 2024.
SNCF Connect & Tech has already experimented with artificial intelligence, especially with voice assistants. A few years ago, TOM.travel met the Jarvis team, of which you were a part and which worked on these topics. With advances in AI, will we see a travel assistant appear soon?
At SNCF Connect & Tech, we are already working to improve the customer’s end-to-end shopping journey, from home to destination. When we send him inspirational content by email, we are already a travel assistant. In fact, we did experiments with conversational messaging a few years ago. I think generative artificial intelligence will open new doors. But we mainly focus on our core business, trains. Here we are most expected.
However, we see a lot of talk about automation in your new features…
The full train alarm, for example, makes it possible to reduce customer effort by automating certain tasks. We noticed that customers spent long minutes refreshing their web page to see if seats became available when a train was full. We wanted to simplify this process. Therefore, as soon as a place becomes available, he receives a notification.
What about your progress in terms of conversation?
The technology we developed, especially during the Jarvis era, today powers features like universal input. It is possible to speak orally “Paris-Marseille tomorrow” or write it down and get a quote. Generative AI gives new impetus to our internally developed open source technology. We have a certain lead and we will be able to take advantage of that to make it easier to find train journeys.