AI-powered chat support that makes travel less stressful

Pickyourtrail (PYT), an online travel booking platform in India, strives to develop travel itineraries for consumers that will create memories—good ones, that is. However, issues with PYT’s previous customer support platform led to misdirected itineraries and overwhelmed agents, threatening the core promise of their business: hassle-free travel. 

Faced with this urgent situation, PYT turned to Freshworks to deliver timely and accurate support when travelers needed assistance with booking or their itinerary.

With Freshworks’ conversational support, PYT reduced the load on its 40 support agents by handling 26% of all queries through a chatbot, enabling its agents to easily handle thousands of monthly conversations. PYT also reduced first response times by over 30% and boosted customer satisfaction scores.

The company

From just $1,700 in seed capital in 2014, Pickyourtrail has grown into India’s top travel aggregator, helping travelers research, plan, and book holidays in top-rated destinations. The company’s unique itinerary-building platform considers factors like a traveler’s interests, trip duration, and budget to deliver the brand promise of “Craft Your Holiday, Your Way” entirely online.

The challenge

Happy travelers are the lifeblood of success for online travel companies, notes PYT Associate Product Manager Nishanth Thilagar. “In our industry, we focus on repeat customers to drive business growth, and for that we need 100% customer satisfaction for every travel experience,” he says. 

So it was a problem when PYT discovered it was mixing up travelers’ itineraries. A traveler vacationing in Greece, for example, would receive the next day’s itinerary in Bali. This led to stress and confusion and severely impacted customer experience and satisfaction, according to Krishnamoorthy Venkatakrishnan, PYT’s Customer Experience Manager. Customers needed a quick and easy way to connect with support to get their itineraries sorted out.

Problem was, its primary support channel, Telegram, couldn’t handle the high volume of incoming conversations—especially for a growing startup that initially had just five agents. First response times were slow, particularly for travelers who needed quick answers to pressing concerns.

“As we expanded our internal support team, it became apparent that our existing support platform was unable to provide the necessary tools we needed to accommodate call volume and growth,” says Venkatakrishnan.

In the travel industry, where repeat business and customer referrals are essential to sustainable revenue, PYT needed a modern customer support platform that could help it resolve customer inquiries quickly and accurately.

The solution

Aiming to boost satisfaction and solve internal support roadblocks, PYT implemented Freshworks’ customer service solution, including Freddy AI Agent, to deliver a great experience at every touchpoint in their customer journey—including on its mobile app, which has AI bots integrated into the platform, offering customers another way to get support while traveling. And the implementation of Freddy AI Copilot helps agents to be more productive.

Venkatakrishnan says Freshworks’ AI features have helped them drive repeat business and expand support:

• AI-powered chatbots route pre-converted customers (those who have yet to book a trip) with questions or booking issues 

• Freddy AI Agent (AI chatbots) seamlessly hand off mobile customers who are actively traveling to a live agent for more time-sensitive requests

• Long ticket threads and replies are quickly summarized with Freddy AI Copilot, helping agents respond more quickly and effectively 

• Freddy AI Copilot's Tone Enhancer adapts a message’s tone and delivery to the needs of individual customers—ensuring that even in the most stressful situations, agents remain calm from the customers’ point of view

• After the resolution, Post-Resolution Quality Coach (a Freddy AI Copilot feature) assesses the quality of a conversation and offers suggestions for improvement

"In the online travel space, customers aren’t bound by business hours—they’re booking travel 24/7,” says Venkatakrishnan. “With Freddy AI Agent, our chatbots can address inquiries round the clock. It’s a powerful feature to improve the customer experience while freeing our agents to focus on immediate traveler needs.”

Impact

With these solutions in place, PYT delivers a better customer experience, connecting customers with help more quickly and easily. Customer service solutions from Freshworks on AWS have improved first response times by more than 30%, deflected 26% of new customer queries with AI chatbots, and established a clear process for tracking CSAT scores to reflect improved customer satisfaction and retention.

With the analytics available in Freshworks, PYT now has access to detailed KPIs for chat conversations through volume, performance, and CSAT analysis that allow it to swiftly pinpoint and resolve recurring issues. “Before Freshworks, we didn't have much clarity or data to guide continual improvements,” says Thilagar. “But now, with all the customer insights we have access to, we can drive more decisions that positively impact the business.”