FCM Travel Solutions - Sam (Smart Assistant for Mobile) and HUB
Name of Organization / Company: FCM Travel Solutions, Singapore
Category: Award for the Innovative Use of Technology in Customer Service > Other Service Industries
Entry Title: FCM - Sam (Smart Assistant for Mobile) and HUB
Essay
FCM Travel Solutions,a leading global corporate travel management company (TMC), represented in 95+ countries with over 6,000 employees. The company provides tailored travel programmes to small and medium businesses, large national and multinational enterprise companies across all industries.
Objectives:
1) To create a unique point of difference in Customer Service using innovative technology created by FCM
2) To offer technology as a suite of services connecting corporates to their individual travellers in real time with increased duty of care
3) To provide business travellers with technology enacting simulation of the human touch that accompanies them at every step of the journey, providing them with 24/7 support, and allowing travel managers to have easy access to travellers’ itineraries from air to land
Current Industry Situation
Technology among TMCs are often enhancements of existing tools for online booking, expenses or reporting, developed to create savings within travel policy spend, rather than drive innovation in business travellers' experience and effective travel and costs management by travel managers.
Road to Transformation
Offering a blend of innovative technology suite and real person travel consultants through the six-step journey below.
Step 1: Company Setup
• FCM provides HUB, a portal site for managing and booking travel with traveller preferences, travel policies, approval hierarchies, which is integrated fully with client’s HR system and automatically updated for new and ex-employees.
• Able to obtain real-time travel alerts, visa info Step 2: Pre-Approval to Travel
• Provide a web-based travel request form customised to client’s needs. This replaces paper-pencil, or email chain processes in traditional companies
Step 3: Booking via a flexible suite of options
• Online: Travellers can use the online booking tool (OBT) to book flight, hotel, rail, car
• Mobile: With Sam, FCM mobile app, users can make phone bookings
• Offline: For complex itineraries, travellers can call FCM’s consultants who are locally hired in each country and equipped with expertise and knowledge of local nuances to provide support
Step 4: Approval
• Integrated with HUB and Sam, travel bookings go through approval process using the device medium of convenience.
Step 5: During the Journey
• Sam -FCM’s game-changing chatbot-based ‘Smart Assistant for Mobile’, a pioneering product created by FCM Lab
• Known as the travel assistant in the pocket
• Blends a powerful mix of Artificial Intelligence with the expertise of real FCM travel consultants to deliver personalised, relevant information to business travellers’ mobile devices through an intuitive chat-based interface
• Sam curates responses according to every traveller’s circumstances, handles everything from booking flights, hotels or ground transport to providing check-in reminders, traffic, delays and gate information, weather information, traveller tips with real users. It integrates with Uber and Lyft for on-site travel, WorldAware (premier global risk management company) for duty of care,expense systems such as Concur or Certify
• Able to call or chat with the same FCM travel consultants whom you have been talking to before your travel
• Currently operational in 50 international, 10 Asian markets
• 50,000 users as of 080419
• New users increasing at a rate of 1,000/month
• Making an impact on travel for deaf community
Examples of advances in Sam innovations currently in pilot, based on user feedback
• Functionality to perform the check-in process on traveller’s behalf
• Adding new city guides based on users’ most visited destinations
• Module for travel managers, expanding Sam’s capabilities to booker or travel manager to view their current travellers’ itineraries,receive crucial notifications about events that affect them,like flight delays or cancellations
Step 6: Reporting
• Check ClientBank for reports, analytics
• Expense management technology to obtain information of travellers, costs of travel programme
• Enables clients to access data on where they can reduce spend, leakage, where FCM has helped with cost savings
LINKS:
URL 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N_vZhNfY2I
URL 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRujxgqO-g0
URL 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpOB4vE5P5g