Today’s newspaper carried a full page advertisement on The Gen AI Hackathon. Also, glanced similar ads on X a few days back. The deadline is today. The problem statements are interesting to solve. Due to personal obligations, and time constraints I wasn’t able to plan and prepare detailed solutions. On this Gandhi Jayanthi holiday, spent time on this simple chatbot solution: Asa.
Done is better than Perfect. Publishing a solution to the below problem statement.
“Indian is the 7th largest country. Can you make it #1 for flight experience.”
I expanded on my earlier idea on Air Safety Awareness, by picking one use case with two personas:
Subbu & Eswari are retired couples visiting their son in New York, US. Their ticket from Chennai to New York via connecting flight at London, has been booked in advance by their son . How might the airlines guide them to fly at ease.
Recommending them to install an app might not work out as many travellers don’t want to install one more app. How might we utilize WhatsApp or RCS messages to help them fly at ease.
Since the problem statement was shared by Akasa, came up with the chatbot Asa. (name suggested by Gemini) Since the Akasa logo is called the “Rising A,” contemplated on some names like “The Guiding A,” “Fly at Ease,” “A-hostess” but settled with Asa, because when the chatbot interacts with the passengers on WhatsApp, “Hi, I’m Asa…” sounds easy. Referred to branding guidelines from AkasaAir: Sunrise Orange: FF6300 & Passionate Purple: 5C0FD9. Gemini suggested that the font used in the logo might be a custom one. “AS Circular” or custom “Poppins.”
*n.b: Referring to the name Akasa and its branding guidelines, as the problem statement I picked has been shared by Akasa. No intention to infringe on Akasa’s brand identity in any way.
Let’s delve into Asa‘s role:
- The airline collects the mobile no. of passengers, while booking the ticket.
- Asa sends the first Hello to Subbu & Eswari, immediately after the ticket is booked.
- Asa migh have created a WhatsApp group between Subbu & Eswari and started the conversation. However, many people have the tendency to use the groups to forward casual messages, videos and photos and the actual guiding conversation from Asa might get lost in between other unimportant forwards. So, Asa will stick to messaging individuals 🙂
- Asa sends a reminder 2 weeks before the flight.
- Asa sends a reminder 1 day before the flight.
- Asa sends guiding instructions on the day of departure.
- The users updates a list of items or photo of items in the bag and checks if anything is prohibited.
- The user shares the dimension of the carry on luggage and checks if it will fit in the storage cabin.
- Asa lets users to enter the language of choice and send voice based responses.
Why this matters to the airlines?
An exceptional customer experience goes beyond service – it’s about trust, communication, and support at every step of the flyer journey. Being supportive and providing easy access to information can transform the flyer experience, build trust, increase loyalty, besides saving hours of wasted time.
Attitude is Everything 