JetBlue's New Customer Service Software Will Track Your Complaints

Those phone calls, tweets, and in-person chats all go to one place.

There you are, sitting at your airport gate, when the dreaded delay announcement comes. Most everyone lets out a groan, but from there, the emotions divert in a multitude of directions: phone calls, tweets, and in-person detentes. JetBlue's aware of that, and is now doing something about it by investing in a new customer service technology that combines all those interactions—to an almost scary extent.

The airline announced on Tuesday a partnership with the startup Gladly, which, according to a statement released by JetBlue, "allows customers to move from one communication channel—such as phone, text, chat, email, Tweet, or even Facebook message—to the next without taking valuable time to repeat and recap their previous conversations." That means going forward, every interaction you have with JetBlue will be collated into one place. In the current setup, all those modes of communication are cordoned off from one another, so there's no way for a gate agent to know that you've already spoken with customer service on the phone, or for the person behind the Twitter account to know that you've also already spoken to the gate agent.


As Business Insider reports, Gladly's system will give JetBlue staff a "complete dossier with contact information, past and upcoming flights, along with any and all communication he or she has had with the airline." As the saying goes, knowledge is power: While the new system will allow JetBlue staff to know you're upset about a lost bag if you've already tweeted about it, in the future, it might also have a downside. A mobile version of the software will allow flight attendants to look up your complete history if they decide it's necessary, which could work against you—adding to the list of ways airlines are tracking you digitally, along with fingerprint scanners and facial recognition technology.

Although exact financial details were not available, JetBlue's implementation of Gladly's tech goes beyond just a partnership, as the airline has reportedly invested $2.5 million in the startup to date through its venture capital arm, called JetBlue Technology Ventures.

Overall, Gladly's implementation could prove a boon for customers with complaints, and seeing how great customer service correlates with increased company values, a boon for airlines, too. In a year already filled with plenty of overbooking nightmares and misdirected passengers, however, it's hard to predict if airlines will know what to do with the powerful tools in front of them.