HiJiffy, the award-winning Guest Communication Hub, has launched its first dedicated hospitality voice assistant.

HiJiffy’s multilingual hotel virtual assistant has ushered in a new era in guest communications, capable of performing complex voice interactions using complete sentences and providing instant voice responses that faithfully reproduce human-like conversations.

Already available on WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, the technology will soon work across more channels, from chat widgets on hotel websites to other social media and messaging apps.

This solution allows hoteliers to customize it according to their brand guidelines and preferences and includes multiple customization options such as gender, accent, tone or rhythm.

“Voice assistants ensure a seamless customer experience as guests can ask all kinds of questions regarding their stay, from before, during and after their visit,” said HiJiffy CTO José Mendonça.

These new features include powerful insight extraction capabilities when collecting and collating enriched data through conversations. Moreover, it helps hoteliers to develop customer profiles, enabling them to make better strategic decisions in the future.

The solution, which is currently in beta testing at a limited number of hotels, will be available immediately to all customers who request it. It should be noted, in this context, HiJiffy has provided AI-based communication solutions for 1,600 hotels worldwide and in Spain in collaboration with brands such as Bahia Principe Hotels & Resorts, Estival Group or Artiem.

“Humanized” voice assistant.

HiJiffy’s voice assistant uses Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to process conversations and interpret guest intent.

It also uses Neural Text-to-Speech (TTS) to reproduce natural, human-like prosody and clear articulation of words, which reduces listening fatigue when guests talk to the AI ​​system, making interactions more natural and engaging.

To increase the efficiency of this technology, while developing the solution at Aplysia Lab, HiJiffy’s data science team specifically focused on ensuring the best performance from voicebot in terms of latency (processing time) and word error rate (detection error).

Sophisticated conversation solutions

When guests interact with HiJiffy’s pioneering conversational solution, they can describe their questions or requests in detail. Virtual assistants, in turn, offer voice responses by replicating human-like interactions.

“The technology behind the HiJiffy voicebot is far more advanced than traditional speech recognition technology in standard Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems which are generally limited to processing simple “yes” and “no” commands. », said the CTO of HiJiffy.

“Unlike Interactive Voice Response systems that rely on guests to enter information manually (for example, if you want option Y, press the X button…), our AI-based voice assistant facilitates smoother voice assistance, as you are not limited by complicated menu scripts. set. This makes this next-generation communication system better equipped to guide guests in the right direction in a completely personalized and self-service model, thereby increasing customer satisfaction,” says José Mendonça.

7 billion voice messages are sent daily on WhatsApp alone

According to official figures that WhatsApp disclosed earlier this year, 7 billion voice messages are sent via its app every day.

In this regard, HiJiffy’s CTO stated: “Considering that WhatsApp is the most used messaging app in Europe, with over 30 million local users in countries such as the UK, Germany, Italy or Spain, the relevance of voice messaging for hotels- European hotel is undeniable”.

Apart from WhatsApp and other messaging apps like Telegram or WeChat, major social networks like Instagram or Facebook also have voice messaging services.

Being a growing trend among smartphone users, voice messaging is far from a reality only among young people.

In fact, according to a recent study on this subject, conducted by Statista in Brazil, more than four out of five Internet users send voice messages in 2022, indicating that this is a practice across generations. In other European countries such as Spain, the figures are believed to be similar.

“It is easy to understand that if hoteliers ditch voice assistant capabilities, especially when it comes to the younger generation, they will be missing out on important revenue-generating opportunities, as well as not providing the best customer experience”, anticipates Mendonça, who also states that “hoteliers need to consider the expectations of their national and international guests when evaluating the relevance of implementing voicemail in their business.”