KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has launched trials of Facebook Messenger chat service on its website in select markets of Japan, South Korea and South Africa.

The service aims to give website visitors the option to ask service agents questions around booking, changing bookings, or sorting out the baggage options for their trip.

Pieter Groeneveld, senior vice president of digital at Air France KLM says the new service is part of the airline's ongoing strategy to embrace social media channels as customer touchpoints.

"KLM wants to be where its customers are and make it convenient for them to ask questions throughout the entire customer journey.

"The integration of Messenger customer chat into KLM.com makes it even easier to have a personal conversation with KLM, which can be reread and continued at any given time or place."

Customers can click on a 'chat now' button on the relevant web pages and will be directed to Messenger customer chat to correspond directly with an airline representative in Japanese, Korean and English.

The airline already offers direct chat services on its website in six European markets, but this is the airline's first trial of Facebook Messenger for these purposes.

KLM will review the results of these initial trials to guide a further roll-out of the service in future.