JetBlue Set to “Leapfrog” the Competition in the CX Department

JetBlue officials have always viewed themselves as innovators, especially when it comes to customer experience.

Through a new partnership with Gladly, a modern customer service platform, JetBlue is poised to raise its customer service levels, enabling travelers to have one continuous conversation with JetBlue’s customer support team across multiple communication channels.

Loyalty360 caught up with Frankie Littleford, vice president, customer support at JetBlue Airways, to learn more about how this partnership will elevate the customer experience.

What makes Gladly’s modern customer service platform unique and what are your goals for it from a customer engagement/customer experience perspective?
Littleford: From Day 1, we’ve always been innovators when it comes to customer service. From having a 100% work-at-home call center model to televisions at every seat, to be the only airline with free, high-speed, gate-to-gate Wi-Fi at every seat, on every plane, we’ve taken an innovative and disruptive approach to the way we do things. This ensures that we stay relevant–both in the industry we are in and to the Customers we serve. Through this partnership with Gladly, we are going to leapfrog the competition once again by modernizing the customer service experience and making it all about interactions, not transactions. 

CX is seen as the great differentiator for all brands, especially airlines. How will this partnership magnify the JetBlue customer experience?
Littleford: Seventeen years ago, when JetBlue was founded, the phone was the primary way we communicated with our customers. In fact, the first voice that you hear when you call in is mine! At that time, those customer support solutions worked for us. They were cutting edge and provided a way for us to track how quickly we could resolve issues, and track the biggest issues we were facing. Fast forward to today and customers reach us by every channel they can think of. They use multiple ways of communicating with their friends and family−text, tweet, Facebook. Plus, good old-fashioned phone and email. Gladly will allow us to communicate better with our customers through their preferred communication channels.

Did customer feedback play a role in this and, if so, how?
Littleford: Customers want to talk to companies the same way they talk to their friends and family. Whether it's via email, call, text, tweet or chat, they want us to know who they are, and not have to start over every time they switch channels. Gladly will help us deliver more personalized, empathetic and seamless service to our customers.

Gladly was brought to JetBlue through JetBlue Technology Ventures (JTV), our venture capital subsidiary of JetBlue. We worked with them on a deep dive to imagine “The Future of the Contact Center.” The team spent 12 weeks evaluating the landscape to determine the most innovative companies and Gladly topped the list.

What kinds of behavioral changes are you looking for from customers through this partnership?
Littleford: The Customer Service team is at the heart of what we do. Our crew members are already trained to provide service in a thoughtful, meaningful way. We think of Gladly as an enhancement to help connect our team provide service faster and more efficiently than ever before. 

So often airline customers feel disconnected. This seems like a very innovative way for JB to smooth out the process and make it seamless?
Littleford: Technology has evolved the way we communicate. In our personal lives, we communicate across many channels without thinking about the channel, whether it’s Facebook Messenger, a text, email, etc. Each conversation picks up right up where we left off and we don’t have to recap our previous conversation, just because we switch channels. People want to communicate with companies in the exact same way. They don’t want to have to repeat themselves just because they send an email and then pick up the phone to call. But until now, technology hasn’t enabled this kind of continuous conversation to happen. In fact, there’s not a single airline that marries all interactions with a single customer together in one view. Gladly is helping us to change that. 

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