Jetstar looks to AI for smarter customer service

Jetstar is looking to artificial intelligence to boost its ability to provide "smart service" to customers and differentiate in Asia's increasingly congested low-cost carrier market. A demonstration at Salesforce's annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco revealed a smart service platform powered by Salesforce and IBM, using both vendors' respective AI technologies Einstein and Watson. There is some ambiguity over how much of what was shown in the presentation is in production use. Salesforce's managing director for global go-to-market strategy and execution in the vendor's travel, transportation and hospitality segments, Farhan Mohammad, called it "a demonstration of how Jetstar is using Salesforce". Jetstar's head of digital Cathryn Arnold indicated to iTnews following the presentation that the IBM Watson tie-ins were "aspirational" and not yet in production.