KoreaAirline (full-service carrier)Transform · $200K
Korean Air

Two airlines, one conversation — agentic disruption and loyalty-migration service for the Korean Air-Asiana integration

The Asiana integration hands Korean Air the region's hardest service problem: every schedule consolidation, mileage conversion and cabin-product change generates confused, anxious contacts from two loyalty bases at once; an agentic frontline that rebooks across both networks and answers SKYPASS-conversion questions consistently is the difference between an integration passengers forgive and one they punish.

Entry use case
Mileage-integration and SKYPASS conversion desk
Expected outcome
Absorb the integration-driven inquiry surge with consistent, policy-accurate conversion answers, protecting loyalty-base trust while human desks handle complex itineraries.
Recommended next step
Integration-program briefing with SKYPASS and service leadership: baseline conversion-inquiry volumes, then scope a Transform deployment timed to the next mileage-integration milestone.
What we understand

Korean Air's operating reality

Korean Air completed its acquisition of Asiana Airlines and is absorbing the brand, with the combined mega-carrier operating under the Korean Air name and Asiana's operations folding in through 2026-2027.

Public fact

Mileage integration is politically sensitive: Korea's FTC has publicly intervened on the Asiana-to-SKYPASS conversion terms, ordering revisions to protect Asiana members' interests.

Public fact

Integrating fleets, schedules and cabin products creates a multi-year wave of itinerary changes, equipment swaps and policy questions across both customer bases.

Reasoned inference

Korean honorific service register and Japanese/Chinese/English visitor-language coverage are simultaneous quality bars for a carrier hubbing Incheon transfer traffic.

Reasoned inference

Integration-period contact volume likely runs multiples of baseline, with mileage-conversion and schedule-change questions dominating queues.

Seller hypothesis — validate

LCC subsidiaries (Jin Air absorbing Air Busan and Air Seoul) add a parallel low-cost integration with its own service surge.

Public fact

Validate with the account team before outreach: Integration-milestone calendar and expected inquiry waves by phase · FTC-approved conversion terms status and how policy updates propagate to service channels · Incumbent contact-center stacks on both the Korean Air and former-Asiana estates · PIPA and aviation-regulatory constraints on automated outbound to affected passengers

Build vs buy

Why we have a right to win here

Buy-led target

Limited internal ability or appetite to build the core platform — strong candidate for the packaged solution

Evidence: Korean Air is an operations-first flag carrier whose IT change runs through the PSS estate and system integrators, with its technology capacity now consumed by the largest airline-systems integration in Korean history — there is no internal AI-platform program, making conversational AI a clear governed buy timed to the merger.

Why they won't build the full stack: No airline mid-merger builds conversational-AI infrastructure: every engineering hour is committed to consolidating two PSS, loyalty and operations estates under regulatory deadlines; a bought platform rides above both estates and delivers integration-period capacity now, then scales down as the surge passes.

What management is signalling

Korean Air's Asiana integration is proceeding on a public timeline — brand absorption through end-2026, combined mega-carrier launch targeted for 2027 — with Korea's FTC publicly ordering revisions to the Asiana mileage-conversion plan to protect members.

Reported factpublic disclosures and FTC announcements · Dec 2025

GTM implication: The mileage-conversion desk is a compliance-critical, board-visible workflow with a hard external clock — sell policy-exact automated answers as regulatory risk management, not just cost reduction.

Integration costs and merger-period operational complexity likely pressure margins through the combined-carrier launch window.

Inferencerecent investor communications (validate) · 2025-2026

GTM implication: Position usage-based agentic capacity as the merger-shaped cost model: absorbs the surge, no permanent headcount, measurable per integration milestone.

What already exists (don't pitch this)
  • Korean Air app and web self-service for booking and check-in
  • SKYPASS loyalty platform and published mileage-integration plan
  • Chatbot deflection on FAQs
  • Schedule-change notification capability via SMS and email
What customers still can't do end-to-end (pitch this)
  • →Policy-exact mileage-conversion answers at surge volume across two loyalty systems
  • →Transactional rebooking across two PSS estates in-conversation
  • →Proactive outreach for consolidation-driven schedule changes
  • →Visitor-language depth (Japanese, Mandarin) for Incheon transfer traffic
Opportunity map

Where agentic communications pays off first

WorkflowWhy it matters hereValueComplexitySpeedChannels
Mileage-integration and SKYPASS conversion desk
Policy-exact conversion answers at unlimited capacity, updated centrally the day rules change; complex cases escalate with full context.
Mileage conversion is the most emotionally charged, FTC-watched element of the merger; inconsistent answers become regulatory and press incidents.
Friction today: Conversion ratios, elite-status mapping and award-seat questions flood queues; answers vary by agent and change as FTC-ordered revisions land.
VoiceApp chatKakaoTalkWeb
Integration rebooking and schedule-change service
Proactive schedule-change outreach with rebooking options in-channel; call waves absorbed without integration-period surge hiring.
Network consolidation re-times and re-equips thousands of itineraries; every change is a contact from a passenger who didn't choose it.
Friction today: Schedule-change notifications trigger call waves; rebooking across two PSS estates requires specialist agents.
App chatSMSVoice
Disruption rebooking and refund-status service
Proactive disruption rebooking in Korean, English, Japanese and Mandarin; refund status self-served in-channel.
Business-as-usual disruption still runs underneath the merger; queues doubled by integration questions melt on weather days.
Friction today: Disruption spikes stack on integration volume; refund-status repeat calls persist for weeks after each event.
App chatSMSVoice
Watch the change

Mileage-integration and SKYPASS conversion desk: today vs the agentic model

Scenario: An Asiana Diamond member's Incheon-Frankfurt itinerary is re-timed in a consolidation wave; the agent calls proactively in honorific Korean, explains his SKYPASS status mapping and converted mileage balance under the latest FTC-approved terms, rebooks him onto the new schedule and books a human desk callback for the award-seat question — trust kept through the change he never asked for.
Today
same interaction, two worlds
Agentic layer
Disruption call spike
10× volume, melted queues
suppressed by proactive rebooking
Assumption
Cost per contact
$13.50 median assisted
$1.84 median self-service
Benchmark
QA coverage
1–2% sampled
100% scored
Platform capability
Sources & assumptions
  • · Disruption call spike: Operator-reported pattern (assumption); suppression measured in pilot
  • · Cost per contact: Gartner customer service cost benchmarks, 2024
  • · QA coverage: Platform capability: every interaction logged and evaluated
  • · Gartner, customer service cost benchmarks (2024): $13.50 median assisted vs $1.84 self-service per contact
  • · McKinsey, digital-first collections research: 20–25% NPL reduction among leaders; up to 40% opex reduction with gen AI
  • · Baymard Institute: ~70% average cart abandonment (meta-analysis)
  • · IAMAI–Kantar via IBEF (2025): 900M+ Indian internet users; 98% consume Indic-language content
  • · LeadSquared and vendor funnel studies: 78% of students choose the first institution to respond (directional, vendor data)
  • · HDI / ITSM operator benchmarks: $15–25 per L1 ticket; 40–60% of L1 volume is resets/status (validate per customer)
  • · Conventional-flow wait times and volumes are typical operator patterns — assumptions to replace with the customer's own baseline
  • · Agentic-flow behaviors (context retention, 100% logging, in-line policy checks) are platform capabilities, not projections
Recommended solution

One integrated stack, opinionated for this account

Channels · Tilicho Labs
VoiceApp chatKakaoTalkWebSMS

Voice & channel orchestration, telephony, conversational execution, session/state, routing, integration build. Capability coverage validated during implementation.

Intelligence · Google Cloud
Gemini reasoningEnterprise groundingWorkflow agentsMulti-agent orchestrationGoverned actionsEvaluation & analytics
Systems · Korean Air
SKYPASS loyalty platformFormer-Asiana mileage systemsCRMPSS/reservations (both estates)Disruption managementPayments/refundsPSS/reservations

API access to these systems is the critical-path dependency.

Trust & languages
KoreanEnglishJapaneseMandarin

Identity-bound sessions, policy-bounded actions, 100% audit logging, human approvals at defined points, in-tenant intelligence.

Business case

The economics, with your numbers

Addressable monthly interactions1.5M
Seller assumption — replace in discovery
Current cost per interaction ($)$5.0
Industry benchmark scale — validate
Automation / assistance rate (%)55%
Seller assumption — pilot proves this
$7.5M
Current operating cost / mo
$46.0M
Modelled gross benefit / yr
0.1 mo
Payback on Transform
1302%
3-yr ROI (modelled)
Automated/assisted interactions per month825K
Modelled AI run-cost per month (usage + cloud, system estimate)$289K
New monthly operating cost$3.7M

All figures are modelling estimates from the labeled inputs above — nothing here is customer-provided yet. The pilot's first job is replacing these assumptions with Korean Air's measured baseline. Package price covers implementation only; recurring usage billed separately.

Recommended package

Transform — $200K implementation

Transform · $200K · A broader enterprise deployment14–20 weeks phased across units

Why this package for Korean Air: Integration touches every service surface at once — loyalty migration, network-consolidation rebooking, disruption handling across two fleets — justifying a multi-workflow enterprise deployment timed to the merger calendar.

Included
  • 7–10 channels
  • Multiple inbound + outbound workflows
  • Complex enterprise integrations
  • Multiple business units or geographies
  • Advanced agent orchestration
  • Enterprise grounding
  • Governance & evaluation framework
  • Role-based human supervision
  • Custom analytics & optimization
  • Production hardening + managed rollout plan
Not included
  • ✕Usage & consumption (billed separately)
  • ✕Ongoing managed operations (contracted separately)
Recurring costs (separate from the package)

Packages cover implementation and integration only. Recurring costs are billed separately: Tilicho Labs platform usage (~$0.15/call-min indicative, usage only), Google Cloud consumption, telephony/carrier charges, managed operations, and support & optimization. No package includes unlimited usage.

Customer resources required
  • · API access + credentials for: SKYPASS loyalty platform, Former-Asiana mileage systems, CRM
  • · A named business owner for mileage-integration and skypass conversion desk
  • · Security review counterpart and policy sign-off (SKYPASS loyalty platform scope)
  • · Baseline metrics for the pilot's success thresholds
Executive messages

What to say to whom

CEO

“The merger's success will be judged by whether two loyalty bases feel kept or captured; consistent, instantly available integration service is the cheapest trust insurance the combined carrier can buy — and the FTC is watching exactly this.”

CIO / CTO

“You're consolidating two PSS and loyalty estates anyway; a governed agent layer above both gives passengers one consistent conversational front while the systems merge underneath on their own timeline.”

COO

“Integration volume stacks on baseline operations for years; elastic agentic capacity absorbs the merger surge without hiring a workforce you must shed when integration completes.”

Head of Customer Service / SKYPASS

“Mileage-conversion questions are your queue-melter and your compliance risk; an agent that gives policy-exact answers updated centrally the day FTC revisions land removes both at once.”

Chief Risk / Compliance Officer

“With the FTC actively supervising conversion terms, 100% logged, script-governed conversations are regulatory evidence — auditability no surge-hired human floor can match, PIPA-aligned throughout.”

CFO / Procurement

“Integration service costs are one-time-shaped but multi-year long; usage-based agentic capacity matches the curve exactly, and the pilot measures cost per integration contact against your own baseline.”

Outreach

Pre-built offer emails for Korean Air

Written from this account's own research — the strategic signal, the capability gap, the entry workflow, and the modelled economics — not a mail-merge template. Pick the moment and the persona, edit anything, then copy or open in your mail client.

Moment in the deal
Cold outreach — no prior conversation
Who it's addressed to
Cares about: The workflow itself and its daily failure modes
Register
Length
Draft — edit freely before sending
Open in mail client

Customer-safe by construction: drafts are composed only from customer-facing fields. Account tier, build-vs-buy classification, priority score, internal routing, and partner-commercial detail are not inputs to the composer, so they cannot appear in a draft. Money figures are always framed as modelled from the customer's own volumes. Read before sending — you own what goes out.

The pursuit

Tier 1 — immediate strategic pursuit

Why this tier

Korea's flag carrier is executing the Asiana absorption — two fleets, two loyalty programs and two service organizations merging into one mega-carrier under FTC scrutiny — a once-in-a-generation surge of disruption, rebooking and loyalty-migration service volume.

30 / 60 / 90-day plan
  • Day 0–30: Integration-program briefing with SKYPASS and service leadership: baseline conversion-inquiry volumes, then scope a Transform deployment timed to the next mileage-integration milestone.; confirm sponsor and baseline data access; validate: Integration-milestone calendar and expected inquiry waves by phase
  • Day 31–60: architecture & security review with the platform team; Tilicho Labs scoping on Voice + App chat; pilot scope signed
  • Day 61–90: Transform package kickoff; mileage-integration and skypass conversion desk pilot in build; success thresholds locked with the Head of Customer Service / SKYPASS
Recommended next step

Integration-program briefing with SKYPASS and service leadership: baseline conversion-inquiry volumes, then scope a Transform deployment timed to the next mileage-integration milestone.

Entry: Mileage-integration and SKYPASS conversion desk · Transform package · 14–20 weeks phased across units. Human fallback throughout; success thresholds agreed before build.

Start the pursuit

Research-based priority-account universe assembled from public information, market scale, communication volume, and solution fit. This is NOT an authoritative list of top Google Cloud customers; existing Google Cloud relationships are noted only where publicly reported. Validate every account with the account team before outreach.