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Whitepaper: The acceptance of chatbotsAutomating Processes in Public TransportationDelight passengers, reduce the burden on hotlines
Schedule information, service disruptions, ticket inquiries, lost and found—public transportation companies handle thousands of standardized passenger inquiries every day. Using AI-native chat and voice bots with multi-agent orchestration, BOTfriends automates these requests around the clock without putting passengers on hold.
Why Transportation Companies Need to Automate Their Services Today
Peaks in inquiries during service disruptions overwhelm traditional hotlines
As soon as a signal box malfunction or a roadwork-related block affects operations, the hotline rings nonstop and the inbox gets flooded. Traditional service centers and IVR solutions can’t scale during such peaks. Our AI agents, chatbots, and voicebots can.
IVR scripts fail because of natural language
Traditional telephony platforms are robust in terms of connectivity (SIP, PSTN, call center telephony) but rigid in their logic. They apply AI to legacy IVR structures and fail when faced with ambiguity, context shifts, and natural language. With an AI-native voicebot setup, the caller can phrase their request freely; a triage agent classifies the issue, and a process agent resolves it end-to-end.
Set aside service staff for complex cases
Complaints, claims processing, and special cases are issues that require real employees to resolve them. However, routine inquiries tie up the majority of service capacity. Automation frees up resources precisely in this area.
Use Cases for AI Agents in Public Transportation
Hotline Triage & Schedule Information by Phone
When passengers call to inquire about departure times or schedules, AI agents retrieve the information from the scheduling system and provide the next available connections without any wait time.
Automatically Communicate Outage Information
In the event of signal box malfunctions, strikes, or construction work, our AI agents answer the most frequently asked questions without any wait time. Live data from the scheduling system is incorporated directly into the response.
Ticket Questions & Fare Information
Which ticket is right for my route? How does the Deutschlandticket work? How do I cancel my subscription? The AI agent is familiar with the entire fare system and provides each passenger with the right recommendation.
Structured Reports for Lost & Found
AI agents systematically record reports of lost items, malfunctioning machines, or damaged vehicles (line, time, description) and forward the case to the appropriate department.
Multi-Agent Orchestration for Public Transportation
Passenger inquiries are diverse, covering a wide range of topics such as schedules, service disruptions, fares, and lost and found. A single prompt cannot reliably handle all of this. BOTfriends distributes these inquiries among specialized AI agents. A typical setup might look like this:
The triage agent understands and classifies
The triage agent understands open-ended passenger inquiries submitted via chat, phone, or email and immediately routes them to the appropriate domain, such as schedule information, ticket purchases, or feedback. Thanks to this intelligent pre-sorting, inquiries are directed straight to the appropriate digital service workflow without any detours.
The Schedule Agent provides real-time information
This process agent accesses your timetable system and live operational data directly in real time to retrieve connection information, current departure times, and any delays. This provides passengers with accurate, real-time information about their travel itinerary and alternative routes within seconds in the event of a disruption.
The rates agent advises customers
The Fare Agent is fully versed in the entire fare system, including all special rules, passes, and regional fare limits. He advises customers on tickets and processes bookings or provides fare advice directly in the background.
Expert knowledge to support the process, available at any time
Whether it’s terms of service, complex passenger rights in the event of delays, or internal guidelines on lost and found items: The knowledge base is directly linked to the passenger and service workflow. As soon as questions about fares, accessibility, or construction-related restrictions arise during interactions with passengers, the AI instantly provides the appropriate answer from your verified knowledge base. This enables precise, reliable information to be provided directly through the communication channel and reduces the daily workload on the customer service center, while sensitive write access to the ticketing system or subscription management takes place in the background in a completely secure and isolated manner.
Benefits of BOTfriends Solutions for Your Public Transportation Services
Unlimited scalability in the event of disruptions
Our chatbots and voicebots handle any number of inquiries simultaneously, without wait times or the need for staff—precisely when traditional hotlines would be overwhelmed.
Consistent, Accurate Rate Information
Fare systems in public transportation are complex. The AI Agent provides all information in accordance with the rules, even in rare special cases that are often handled inconsistently over the phone.
24/7 Service for Passengers
At night, on weekends, and on holidays, passenger inquiries are answered as they come in. This improves service quality without requiring additional staff.
Multilingual Service for Commuters and Tourists
100+ languages and 500+ voices without any separate setup. Multilanguage is a significant service advantage, especially for large cities and tourist-heavy regions.
BOTfriends Solutions for Public Transportation & Transit Agencies
Bring service automation to every touchpoint of your transportation company with an omnichannel AI agent platform for voice, chat, and email.
- No dedicated IT team required
- GDPR-compliant & hosted in the EU
- Made in Germany
Round-the-clock service for your customers
The voicebot takes over your service hotline and remains 100% available even during major disruptions or periods of high call volume, answering questions about schedules or fares in a natural conversation. Thanks to full telephony integration (SIP/PSTN), complex inquiries are seamlessly transferred to your service representatives without any loss of data.
Digital customer service directly through the customer portal, on the website, or via WhatsApp
Whether on the website, in the schedule app, or directly via WhatsApp: The chatbot answers passenger inquiries right where they arise. Thanks to its direct connection to your dispatch system, the AI provides reliable, real-time data on departure times, delays, or alternative routes in a matter of seconds.
Inbox on Autopilot: Combating the Flood of Emails
Smart email automation relieves your customer service center of the flood of written inquiries regarding subscription orders, refunds, or praise and criticism. It reads incoming messages, immediately routes them to the correct department, and triggers the appropriate follow-up processes in your systems in the background, which drastically reduces processing times.
Smart Control for Complex, Multi-Step Workflows
Our AI agents handle complex, multi-step processes such as ticket booking, subscription management, and the entire lost-and-found process. They independently orchestrate these workflows across systems, from the initial request to successful completion in the backend.
Integration with Your Availability and Pricing Systems
BOTfriends integrates with your existing public transit system infrastructure via open APIs for schedule information, fare calculators, CRM, or the ticketing system. With Guided Sovereignty, our team supports you every step of the way—from co-creation in workshops to hypercare during go-live and on-demand solution engineering.
Success Stories: Why Service Teamstrust our AI Agent platform
An enterprise-grade platform for measurable success: BOTfriends optimizes your cost structure and revolutionizes customer interaction. Experience maximum process acceleration on a platform that redefines security and performance for complex enterprise structures.
“Working with Botfriends is truly impressive, as they consistently impress with their quick response times. It’s a real pleasure to work with a team that is so dedicated and efficient. Particularly noteworthy is how attentively Botfriends responds to customers’ wishes and needs, which shows that they truly put the customer first. Not to mention the user-friendly platform, which even those with little IT experience enjoy working with.”
“With BOTfriends, we’re automating service requests via a voicebot. Seamless integration with our existing systems was a key factor for us. We also appreciate the platform’s hybrid approach. A rule-based workflow combined with agent-driven processes strikes us as a good balance. What we value most is the combination of a technologically leading product and a highly dedicated team.”
“Thanks to the introduction of the chatbot, we’ve been able to implement internal processes and workflows that we didn’t have before. We’re deriving significant benefits from this. It was particularly important to us that the bot be integrated into our existing system infrastructure.”
“Chatbots have significantly reduced the workload on our service teams. What we particularly appreciate about BOTfriends is its technological flexibility, which allows us to provide optimal support to international guests at all times through multilingual capabilities and tailored digital solutions.”
“Our chatbot perfectly complements our existing online channels and gives our customers the ability to get answers to questions about Süwag or their energy product around the clock. Automating entire processes—such as meter reading submission and rate consultation—provides our customers with real added value.”
“More than just a simple Q&A bot”
“What I find particularly impressive is that BOTfriends isn’t just a simple Q&A bot. Instead, it’s a true AI. The bot helps handle higher volumes during seasonal peaks, thereby reducing the longer response times that would normally occur.”
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Frequently asked questions
Thanks to our flexible API architecture, our Solution Engineering team implements seamless integrations with leading public transit systems such as PT nova, real-time schedule information systems (HAFAS), and common control center software. This allows AI agents to process data—such as subscription changes, fare inquiries, and refund requests—directly and accurately in the backend, without requiring any manual effort from your team.
Yes, our cloud-based platform is designed to handle peak loads and automatically handles unexpected surges in calls and chats during major disruptions or severe weather. Through intelligent multi-agent orchestration, thousands of passenger inquiries about delays and rail replacement services are resolved simultaneously in real time, without overloading your control center.
Thanks to our no-code approach and preconfigured industry templates, there is no monthly IT overhead, so the first productive AI agents are often up and running within just a few weeks. Our accompanying enablement program also ensures that your own service team can quickly manage and customize the platform independently.
Yes, the BOTfriends platform is fully GDPR-compliant and meets the strict compliance standards that apply to municipal transit agencies and the public sector. Thanks to secure hosting in Europe and a seamless governance structure, you retain absolute data sovereignty over all passenger and subscriber data at all times.