During major irregularities, the service desks of airline companies are heavily overloaded for short periods of time. A chatbot could help out during these peak hours. In this session we show how SWISS International Airlines developed a chatbot for irregularity handling. We shed light on the challenges, such as sensitive customer data and a company starting its journey into the cloud.

1. Enjoy your Trip
Let our Chatbot take care of the rest
Remco Bonse
Sigifredo Grau

2. • Software Development Tech Leader,
SCRUM Master
• @SWISS for 4 years
About Sigi and Remco
• Software Development, SCRUM, Azure
Stack , Angular
• @Trivadis «3LE» for 4 years
• Plays the french horn and ping pong
@CabocloCD

3. Overview
• Introduction to Higgins
• Functionalities
• Architecture, Infrastructure and Security
• Does it work?
• Lessons Learned

4. Obligation to make travelers happy

5. Mayor Disruptions affect thousands

6. Obligation to make travelers happy
especially during Irregularities
VS

7. How
• Customer service
Facebook chatbot
• Reachable at:
swiss.com/bot
lufthansa.com/bot
austrian.com/bot

8. How
• Customer service
Facebook chatbot
• Functionalities
• Show flightstatus
• Booking Push
notifications
• Rebook your flight
• Baggage allowance
• Answer FAQ
• Service Center Handover
• Do basic smalltalk

9. NEW: Operational Push Notifications LH/OS
• Operational Push Notifications
• Once a guest has used his booking code to identfy, operational push
notifications will be sent to his Facebook Messenger account related
to this booking​
• The guest will receive all notifications about his flight(s) lik
• Gate change​
• Delay
• Cancellation​
• Boarding open
• Etc.

11. 11
What
LHG Customer Service Chatbot, Oct. 22, 2019

12. 12
Architecture:
Technologies involved
LHG Customer Service Chatbot, Oct. 22, 2019
Bot Connector to connect with the different channels
Azure App Services and WebJobs for background tasks
Azure Cognitive Services : LUIS (NLP) and QnA Maker (FAQ)
CosmosDB: Store user context and reporting data
Azure Key Vault: Store credentials and other sensitive data
Storage account: File storage (logs and images)

13. 13
Architecture:
QnA Maker
LHG Customer Service Chatbot, Oct. 22, 2019
”Can I fly with my dog?”
Response:
Dogs and cats are welcome in the cabin on Swiss
International flights, as long as the combined weight with
carrier does not exceed 8 kg. To enter the cabin, pets need
to be clean, healthy, and must not smell.

14. 14
Architecture:
LUIS NLP
LHG Customer Service Chatbot, Oct. 22, 2019
”I want to fly to London tomorrow ”
Intent:
search-flight
Entities:
destination: London
departure-date: 23.10.2019

15. 15
Architecture:
Technologies involved
LHG Customer Service Chatbot, Oct. 22, 2019
Bot Connector to connect with the different channels
Azure App Services and WebJobs for background tasks
Azure Cognitive Services : LUIS (NLP) and QnA Maker (FAQ)
CosmosDB: Store user context and reporting data
Azure Key Vault: Store credentials and other sensitive data
Storage account: File storage (logs and images)

16. 16
Architecture:
How do we publish it into many channels?
LHG Customer Service Chatbot, Oct. 22, 2019
• Azure Bot Framework provides tools to build and manage bots.
• Bot Connector easily connects your bot to multiple channels.

17. 17
Architecture:
Technologies involved
LHG Customer Service Chatbot, Oct. 22, 2019
Bot Connector to connect with the different channels
Azure App Services and WebJobs for background tasks
Azure Cognitive Services : LUIS (NLP) and QnA Maker (FAQ)
CosmosDB: Store user context and reporting data
Azure Key Vault: Store credentials and other sensitive data
Storage account: File storage (logs and images)

18. 18
Architecture:
Azure App Services
LHG Customer Service Chatbot, Oct. 22, 2019
“Azure App Service is a Platform as a Service solution that lets you run
your applications at high scale without worrying about maintaining the
infrastructure, including virtual machines.”

19. 19
Architecture:
Technologies involved
LHG Customer Service Chatbot, Oct. 22, 2019
Bot Connector to connect with the different channels
Azure App Services and WebJobs for background tasks
Azure Cognitive Services : LUIS (NLP) and QnA Maker (FAQ)
CosmosDB: Store user context and reporting data
Azure Key Vault: Store credentials and other sensitive data
Storage account: File storage (logs and images)

20. 20
Architecture:
LHG Chatbot diagram
LHG Customer Service Chatbot, Oct. 22, 2019

21. What about Enterprise Security ?

22. 22
Security:
LHG Chatbot diagram
LHG Customer Service Chatbot, Oct. 22, 2019

23. 23
Infrastructure:
Azure ILB ASE
LHG Customer Service Chatbot, Oct. 22, 2019
• ILB ASE: Internal Load Balancer Application Service Environment

24. Lessons Learned
• Why start with voice first?
• Smalltalk != small work
• Human Handover
• User Feedback: Reporting etc.

25. Lessons Learned
SCRUM Setup
• Distributed Team Nearshoring, on premise and consultants
• Mixed Nationalities and cultures
Chatbot Development
• Cloud first
• Social media users
• Customer service scenarios

26. Questions