Vail Has It Licked

The Facts

Vail Resorts is testing a chatbot they call “Emma” to help skiers get information on its multiple ski resorts. Emma can find information about topics including weather, lift status, terrain, parking, traffic, lessons and rentals. She will hand off conversations to a live agent if she can’t answer a question. Emma is 24/7 during the winter season.

Spiker Insights

Vail’s use of Emma is another sign that more companies in the travel, lodging and entertainment industry are developing technologies to provide stronger customer services through mobile devices for their on-the-go consumers.

About half of Americans claim they enjoy using chat platforms to get quick answers to their customer service questions. Still, there is the old guard consumers that prefer speaking to a human because chatbots don’t provide detailed answers they may be searching for.

But handing off more difficult conversations to a live agent, if Emma can’t answer a question, will increase customer satisfaction and expedite any backlog of consumer requests.