Direct Travel | Cognigy

AI travel support inTeams and Slack

Direct Travel is one of North America’s leading corporate travel management companies, headquartered in Denver, Colorado, with more than 1,400 employees and over $5.8 billion in annual travel sales. To align with changing user behavior and increasing demand for digital self-service, Direct Travel sought to make support accessible directly within the collaboration tools employees already use every day.

The challenge

As a company focused on automation, Direct Travel wanted to expand self-service capabilities throughout the traveler journey. Existing solutions proved to be too rigid and lacking flexibility to operate on enterprise collaboration platforms, contact center environments and backed business systems.

Direct Travel needed a solution capable of embedding travel support directly into communication tools and CRMs while maintaining seamless access to service teams whenever further assistance was required.

The solution

Direct Travel introduced an AI agent named Simon, accessible directly through Microsoft Teams and Slack. Instead of requiring travelers to switch applications or contact support separately, users can complete common service requests directly within their daily workspace.

The AI agent supports tasks such as profile updates, invoice retrieval, and travel-related inquiries while remaining connected to Direct Travel's contact center environment and enterprise systems. When further assistance is required, conversations can be seamlessly transferred to live service teams without interrupting the support journey.

The impact

By embedding self-service directly into Microsoft Teams, Slack, and other enterprise platforms, Direct Travel expanded access to support and made the traveler journey significantly more convenient.

The implementation increased automation, self-service adoption, and employee productivity by enabling travelers to resolve routine requests within the tools they already use every day. At the same time, the integration between AI self-service and live service teams created a more seamless service experience across digital and contact center channels.