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When Virgin Voyages launched at the end of 2021, the luxury cruise line set out to disrupt the status quo and reinvent the cruise ship experience. Offering exclusively adult sailings to over 100 destinations, Virgin Voyages challenges industry norms to deliver epic vacations to its sailors.

Yet, entering the market after the height of COVID-19 was daunting for any new company, especially a cruise line. Before its fleets could set sail, it was essential for Virgin Voyages to drive brand awareness, cultivate a strong customer base, and build excitement for cruising again.

“We needed people to choose us versus other established cruise lines,” explains Gabriel Mendez, director of digital experience at Virgin Voyages. “We pride ourselves on offering an elevated service experience and we want that to start before you get on the ship.”

To differentiate its brand at the onset, Virgin Voyages engaged Slalom to redesign its website navigation and content based on what resonated with cruisers post-pandemic. Through user testing and human-centric design innovation, Slalom developed a new website for the cruise line that fueled engagement and increased visitor site depth by 30%.  

“The results were amazing,” recalls Mendez. “People were interacting and engaging more with our website. So, when it came time to elevate our customer experience, Slalom was a natural choice for us to partner with again.”

The website redesign project was only the beginning of Virgin Voyages’ transformative journey with Slalom. After its website went live, the cruise line had to prepare its Sailor Services call center for an influx of customer inquiries and bookings. 

“We’re in a unique situation as a cruise line because you can’t buy something, trial it, and return it if you don’t like it,” notes Mendez. Once someone lands on the website, it can take days or weeks of research before a decision is made—and during that time, customers typically have a lot of questions. Virgin Voyages needed a solution that could ease the booking process for customers while alleviating calls to Sailor Services. 

The cruise line had tried to launch a chatbot with Slalom before, but the technology capabilities were limited at the time. Responses were prescriptive and had to be mapped manually, which increased workloads for internal teams. Additionally, while the bot could answer basic FAQs, it couldn’t handle complex inquiries, which only left customers frustrated. 

Virgin Voyages had considered removing the chatbot from its website altogether—until the advent of generative AI. 

“We started to think about how we can use AI to better our processes and better our customer experience,” says Mendez. “Slalom was one of the first vendors to show us a working generative AI solution that could easily be implemented with our existing chatbot.” 

As excitement around generative AI grew worldwide, Slalom’s team began to strategize how the technology could be used to overcome Virgin Voyages’ challenges. “We had a willingness to experiment,” says Allen Mann, a director at Slalom. “Nobody had answers in this space and there wasn’t a playbook we could follow. But Virgin Voyages was willing to jump in and run these experiments with us.”

In just six weeks, this experimentation proved successful, laying the groundwork for a revolutionary new chatbot. Together, Slalom and Virgin Voyages developed Vivi, one of the first generative AI—powered digital humans built on Salesforce. 

Vivi leverages Salesforce Einstein and Slalom’s generative AI framework to derive information from Virgin Voyages’ internal database. Using semantic knowledge retrieval and model training, Vivi can then respond naturally to customer queries. 

In fact, customers can talk to Vivi like they talk to a human being. Vivi answers multi-faceted, complex questions knowledgeably and empathetically, mirroring Virgin Voyages’ tone and language to create a more realistic customer service chat experience. 

Internally, since response mapping is no longer needed, Vivi also optimizes efficiency and minimizes management costs. Additionally, because Vivi only retrieves information from a private knowledge base, rather than scanning the web, Virgin Voyages can ensure privacy, reduce inaccuracies, and eliminate intellectual property concerns associated with other generative AI technologies.

“It was amazing to partner with Slalom,” says Mendez. “Their team is always ready to adapt and go on whatever journey is needed to obtain the best results.”

After the launch of Vivi, Virgin Voyages experienced an immediate 20% reduction in call center escalations. By deflecting unnecessary and repetitive calls to Sailor Services, agents can accomplish more productive, meaningful work. In turn, this has allowed Virgin Voyages to increase team morale, reduce burnout, and begin transforming Sailor Services into a revenue generator that’s focused on driving bookings. 

As the first cruise line to launch a generative AI-powered digital human, Virgin Voyages is redefining customer satisfaction in its industry and demonstrating the true power that generative AI can give back to people.