Our perpetual smartphone texting is strictly personal: Friends, family, and\u00a0maybe an ex. We almost never text\u00a0the myriad businesses we patronize in daily life, though some of them\u00a0are starting to text us.<\/p>\n
Now, airlines\u2014an industry not known for stellar customer interactions\u2014are joining\u00a0the party, and not just to break the bad news about your flight.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re inviting you to ask questions, and maybe even complain.<\/p>\n
Two airlines have\u00a0dipped their wings into the waters of two-way texting.\u00a0Hawaiian Holdings’ Hawaiian Airlines is adding the feature while JetBlue Airways took a stake in a software startup that will allow its call center staff to start texting customers in the coming months.<\/p>\n
Texting, technically called SMS\u00a0(which stands for short message service),\u00a0is arguably the world\u2019s most favored form of communication, but much of corporate America has been slow to\u00a0adapt.<\/p>\n
The few that have\u2014including Verizon Wireless retailers, British telecom company Sky UK, and Nestle SA\u2019s frozen foods division\u2014are dwarfed by an array of local commerce, from insurance agents, veterinarians, air conditioning techs, and auto dealers\u00a0who have already jumped in to conduct their business.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s \u201ca certain nervousness in the airline industry\u201d about two-way customer texting<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is that consumers adore text messages,\u201d said John Lauer, chief executive and co-founder of Zipwhip, a Seattle startup that\u2019s hoping to evolve customer call centers into places that also handle\u00a0texts.<\/p>\n
\u201cTherefore businesses have to adopt it into their workflow because consumers expect it and demand it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, most airlines offer one-way texting, happy to inform you of a gate change or flight delay via your mobile.<\/p>\n
But don\u2019t respond to these hoping to vent your frustration\u2014you can\u2019t. That means there\u2019s still\u00a0the likelihood of a lengthy phone call, interminable airport queue\u00a0or online chat with what may or may not be a computer-generated android.<\/p>\n
A text-session, on the other hand, is conducted free of time constraints, over hours or even days. Changing a flight via text might even become a task to occupy your boring morning meeting. Another big advantage?<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no learning curve,\u201d said Tracy Behler, senior director for\u00a0online experience at Hawaiian, since everyone already knows how to text.<\/p>\n
Hawaiian announced Thursday that two-way texting will become a permanent customer communication channel.<\/p>\n
Executives in the enterprise texting industry expect that airlines will join a broad array of industries over the next two years that will begin to expand their customer communications channels beyond 800-numbers, email, and online chat.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s been this long gap between customers moving to instant messages for who they talk with and brands doing the same thing,\u201d said Rurik Bradbury, an executive at LivePerson, a New York technology company whose software platform powers Hawaiian\u2019s\u00a0texting.<\/p>\n
Hawaiian began testing texting in April, unsure how much interest customers would have or whether most inquiries would need to be directed to a secure channel to handle payment data, or issues involving the airline\u2019s loyalty program, Behler said.<\/p>\n
But about 70% of the 200 daily texts don\u2019t involve itineraries or the carrier\u2019s HawaiianMiles program.<\/p>\n
Most are curious about traveling with infants, seat changes, or how to handle a child\u2019s car seat, she said. One query the airline reported:\u00a0\u201cI have a painted coconut. Can I carry that to the mainland?\u201d<\/p>\n
The carrier\u2019s\u00a0social media and call centers are connected, with\u00a0different teams taking\u00a0various channels, be it phone, social media, and now text.\u00a0\u201cThe kinds of questions we\u2019re getting are primarily after the booking, but before they travel,\u201d Behler said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were surprised, I think, at the number of things that can be resolved using this.\u201d<\/p>\n
JetBlue plans to incorporate numerous communication channels into its call centers, including texting, with software from Gladly, a San Francisco firm.<\/p>\n
JetBlue acquired a stake in Gladly as part of a\u00a0funding round that raised $36 million.<\/p>\n
The goal is to make customer-service contacts more efficient by migrating a customer\u2019s information across channels, for example, from an email to a text to a phone call, said Jenny Roy, Gladly\u2019s vice president of marketing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t want to start over every time they start a new phone call or start a new channel,\u201d she said, an irksome process Gladly dubs \u201cthe repeat and recap game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Airlines, meanwhile, are likely to lag other industries on bi-directional texting because their customer data is vastly more complex than most,\u00a0and because customer service is a \u201clightning rod\u201d for airlines, given their regular shortcomings and the subsequent media attention, Bradbury said.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s led\u00a0to \u201ca certain nervousness in the airline industry,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Disgruntled customers may be less likely to\u00a0post airline dirty laundry on\u00a0social media\u00a0if they can have an\u00a0exchange via text<\/p>\n
Moreover, \u201cit\u2019s hard for an airline to do it at scale\u201d and make it work, Bradbury said. \u201cWith phone systems they have had 50 years of optimization.\u201d<\/p>\n
He predicts that carriers\u00a0are also less likely to automate their texts with artificial intelligence or bots the way others can\u2014at some point as much as 70% of messaging in banking and telecommunications probably won\u2019t\u00a0involve a human.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason for that is because you have 60-80 very common questions\u201d in those fields,\u00a0Bradbury said. \u201cIn travel, it\u2019s just mind-boggling\u201d given the numerous airfare classes, codings, ticketing platforms, and other variants endemic to the industry\u2019s technology infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Text software executives say that two-way texting doesn\u2019t increase the overall volume of customer service interactions, but it does shift many encounters away from a telephone call.<\/p>\n
Companies generally like that outcome, as calls are hugely expensive in the customer-service field. Call centers typically log the duration of each call and seek to keep them short, since an agent can generally be on the line with only one person at a time, Gladly\u2019s Roy said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut they can respond to two-to-three texts or chats very quickly,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Texting \u201cactually spreads about the same amount of volume across those channels.\u201d<\/p>\n
A broad corporate shift to customer service via text could also carry another benefit for airlines: Disgruntled customers may be a little less likely to\u00a0publicize dirty laundry on Twitter if they can have an\u00a0exchange that\u00a0gets something done.<\/p>\n
But then again, they may start posting screen-shots of unsatisfactory text conversations.<\/p>\n