Business View Magazine | December 2019

44 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2019 Contact centers, hosted PBX, SIP trunking, and AI conversational platforms that the company deploys. According to Norris, “In Red Lion, we’ve just deployed a 1460 Hotel AI conversational platform that allows for reservations support, FAQ conversation on the hotels, and collects a lot of customer integration data for business analysis and training. The problem we’re solving is that there are a lot of reservation systems you have to buy, a lot of front desk staff you have to hire. So, if you can offload the amount of effort going to a live agent by 20 or 30 percent, that really starts to add up fast. Think about training costs and churn - there is a lot of cost in running these front desk and help centers.” In a recent announcement, BluIP touted the launch of the first customer utilizing Artificial Intelligence Virtual Agent, RLH Corp. “The AI virtual agent offers a more seamless experience for travelers and an opportunity to generate greater revenue for hotel owners,” says Martirosyan. “Not only do the owners appreciate that aspect of it, but hotel guests are having real and unique conversations with the AI. This experience has taught us that if you can tailor a system to your guests based on how they use your products, the adoptions are much higher.” AI conversational platforms are changing the industry in a myriad of ways. Norris reports, “We’ve been building interactive voice response (IVR) systems for years. That’s where people call in and hear ‘press or say 1 for this’– which works VP of Business Development, Steve Norris