Andi Smith

Virgin Holidays were looking to enhance the experience of booking a holiday through new modalities.

• Worked with their team to build an AI chatbot that conversed with customers about what they wanted from a holiday, then recommended a package to match.
• Applied sentiment analysis to interpret customer intent from natural language rather than menu-driven input, using IBM Watson.
• Consulted separately with the Virgin Atlantic team on the build of their new website.

Conversational AI in a commercial product, years before the current wave. The lesson was the same one I keep relearning: the model is the easy part, and the value is in what surrounds it.