SAP Concur Travel Bot on Slack

According to IDC, 75% of workers will use digital assistants by 2019. At SAP Concur, we’ve seen increased demand for workplace digital assistants firsthand: over 100 teams installed our Concur Expense bot on Slack within the first 10 hours of its release.

Building on that Concur Expense bot adoption, we’re introducing the Concur Travel bot on Slack, available in beta to joint Concur Travel and Slack customers.

We leveraged the expertise of our Hipmunk team—who built the first and one of the most popular consumer travel chatbots in the industry—and the Concur Travel team, who deeply understand the needs of business travelers.

We also partnered with Slack, the fastest growing team collaboration hub with over 8 million daily active users, to deliver an assistant that enables Concur Travel bookings directly in Slack.

Why build a Concur Travel bot on Slack?

The Concur Travel bot on Slack brings business travel collaboration and booking into the place teams already work—Slack—so frequent travelers can search, plan, and book with coworkers in the same conversation.

Slack connects you to the right team members and the right information to get work done. In fact, the average team spends 10 hours a week in Slack.

We also found that 40 percent of flights booked in SAP Concur in 2017 had at least two users from the same company on board. Did those two coworkers know that ahead of time?

That’s why we found it natural to build a Concur Travel bot on the Slack platform: to make business travel collaboration simpler and to bring the Concur Travel booking process to where you’re already working and chatting about upcoming business trips and meetings.

Now, the Concur Travel bot on Slack can save frequent business travelers time, allowing you to search and book together with coworkers right from Slack.

What can the @Concur_Travel_Beta bot on Slack do?

The @Concur_Travel_Beta bot supports in-policy flight search, co-planning in channels, booking with SAP Concur profile details, and access to trips—without leaving Slack.

Here’s what the @Concur_Travel_Beta bot on Slack can do for you:

• Breezy browsing: Easily search for in-policy flights that take advantage of your company’s negotiated rates without leaving Slack.
  Type a keyword such as “search” or “flights” and the bot displays flight search fields. You can filter by destination, departure and return dates, fare class, preferred airlines, and more—right in your Slack conversation.

• Group planning: Instead of sending flight options back and forth over email, look up flights within the same Slack conversation where you’re discussing travel plans.
  You can share trips or look up flights in real time with colleagues. Co-booking works in public, private, or one-on-one Slack channels.

• Seamless booking: Once flight selections are made, the bot uses your SAP Concur profile to auto-populate saved payment and reward program information for seamless booking.

• Auto-expensing: Have your @Concur_Travel_Beta automatically import your itinerary into Concur Expense, creating an expense entry for your flight.
  Then, simply click “submit" when you touch down at the end of your trip.

• Itineraries on demand: Type “trips” or “itin” to review and access upcoming flight and hotel reservations in your chat with @Concur_Travel_Beta.

How did learnings from Hello Hipmunk shape the business version?

Based on user research and lessons from the Hello Hipmunk chatbot, the Concur Travel bot on Slack prioritizes speed and accuracy for business travel intent—using Slack-friendly UI elements instead of extended back-and-forth.

Tapping into learnings from the Hello Hipmunk chatbot, we built the Concur Travel bot on Slack specifically for you: a business traveler who wants to get travel planning done quickly.

Based on user research, we discovered that business travelers care less about banter with an artificial assistant. They prefer assistants that quickly understand what they want over bots that lead them through lengthy conversations.

Business travelers—more than leisure travelers—require chatbots to understand intent and queries with a high level of accuracy.

Because of these findings, the @Concur_Travel_Beta app for Slack uses forms, menus, self-updating messages, and other novel messaging UI elements to understand intents quickly so we can accomplish your task fast.

How does @Concur_Travel_Beta work in group conversations and slash commands?

@Concur_Travel_Beta is designed to be accessible in group chats for discovery and engagement, and can be called using Slack’s slash command to provide flight and trip information in conversations with colleagues.

Being accessible and available to group chats is another big lesson the Hipmunk team applied to @Concur_Travel_Beta.

We’ve found through our own research, experiments within Hello Hipmunk, and by watching the evolution of the chatbot industry, that including chatbots in group conversations can help with bot discovery and engagement.

With Slack’s slash command (i.e “/concurtravel”), users can call @Concur_Travel_Beta to provide flight and trip information in any conversation they have with colleagues.

FAQ

1) Who can access the Concur Travel bot on Slack?

It is available in beta to joint Concur Travel and Slack customers.

2) What Slack keywords can I type to start a flight search with @Concur_Travel_Beta?

You can type “search” or “flights” to display flight search fields and filters within Slack.

3) Can coworkers plan and co-book travel together in Slack?

Yes. Co-booking works in public, private, or one-on-one Slack channels, and you can share trips or look up flights in real time with colleagues.

4) How does the bot support booking and payment details?

Once flight selections are made, it uses your SAP Concur profile to auto-populate saved payment and reward program information for booking.

5) Does @Concur_Travel_Beta create expenses automatically?

It can automatically import your itinerary into Concur Expense, creating an expense entry for your flight; you then click “submit" at the end of your trip.