Dive Brief:
- JetBlue's customer service team can respond to travelers regardless of the platform they use, leveraging traveler information to create relationships through customer service, said Frankie Littleford, VP of customer support experience, operations and recovery at JetBlue, said in customer service software vendor Gladly's Radically Personal podcast.
- Multiplatform communication lets the airline respond to guests promptly as they travel. "You can start out a conversation on the phone, you can move to a text, all of a sudden something's happening in Facebook and now you're in Facebook Messenger and then you come back to a text," Littleford said. The airline began working in 2017 to streamline customer service processes.
- JetBlue turned to technology to make its customer service workers — a team of 2,800 — go fully remote, Littleford said.
Dive Insight:
Across industries, leading companies are looking to solve a complex puzzle: how to leverage technology in a way that makes the brand stand out.
Swift response to Twitter complaints can boost an airline's net promoter score by 37 points, according to the Harvard Business Review. The increase is significant for an index that ranges from -100 to 100.
Prompt attention to the customer can also have a direct impact in revenue. Customers who've had positive past experiences spend 140% more compared to those who had poor ones, another HBR study found.
JetBlue sees technology as an element that can increase the human touch, by infusing software into the customer and employee experience.
"Our mission is to inspire humanity, and what we've really recognized and focused on is that it starts with your people," said Littleford.
Travel and hospitality industries put customer experience at the center of tech strategies. Southwest Airlines took a similar step at the end of 2019, when it deployed Salesforce Service Cloud's accessibility tools to consolidate client information on a single accessible platform.
Best Western's migration to Amazon Web Services, announced in December, focused on customer-facing systems such as its hotel reservation system, customer rewards platform and contact center.
JetBlue's broader innovation strategy relies on jumping aboard technological developments early. Its investing arm, JetBlue Technology Ventures, looks to invest in startups that can improve customer experience and safety or lower maintenance time.
