Sam launched as FCM's chatbot in 2016, and the TMC last summer announced it had relaunched as an "intelligent virtual assistant" for travelers and travel managers. In June, FCM plans to launch the new Sam across more than 90 countries as a new AI ecosystem that FCM said "will feel like a different product entirely."
The tool can respond to travelers' conversational inquiries with FCM's guardrail system that adheres to spending thresholds, workflow approval processes and supplier preferences as configured by travel managers, according to FCM. For example, Sam will not show out-of-policy hotels as an option, and travelers who are not allowed to book premium fares will not be offered those by the tool.
Travel managers also can access real-time data about their program in a conversational style via Sam, and the tool can hand off travelers to live agents when necessary.
"Sam works alongside our travel consultants so that when a human moment matters most—a disruption, a complex itinerary, an urgent need—our experts step in with the speed, context and care that no technology alone can replicate," FCM Travel global experience officer John Morhous said in a statement.
Morhous added that the June rollout is "only the beginning" and as proprietary technology for FCM, the TMC can store customer data in a private environment rather than use it to train public AI models. "Underpinning it all is FCM's proprietary technology architecture, which defines which trusted data sources Sam queries for each interaction, preventing hallucination and ensuring enterprise-grade accuracy," according to Morhous.
Tags: artificial intelligence (AI) tool Sam John Morhous FCM Travel
