Airline services have been scrambling to improve their customer service strategies and initiatives, making key investments to elevate the overall customer experience. JetBlue is one of the companies that has been actively looking to add value to its customers, using loyalty programs and other means to draw passengers on an international scale. The company recently partnered with Gladly Inc. in an effort to shave time from its customer service call volumes.
By partnering with the technology startup, JetBlue instantly became more customer-facing, and in doing so differentiated itself from other, less than stellar competitors. The airline introduced its software on flights so that the cabin crew would have a bird’s-eye view of information about customers on-board.
And customers are ‘on board’.
Last week, Facebook announced that WhatsApp could now be used as a customer service platform. We now have an interesting race between Apple’s “Apple Business Chat”, Facebook’s own “Messenger for Business”, and Twitter. The goal is to grab a vital piece of the eCommerce landscape: The channel for customer service communication.
In case you’ve been living on an island in Tahiti, with no communication to the outside world, you may not know how important mobile apps have become. In that case, let’s recap. Mobile apps are software applications designed to run on 
The customer experience has transformed significantly over the last century. From 1900 until the 1960s we saw the age of manufacturing, where mass distribution of products eventually ushered in the age of distribution to serve a global economy of buyers. By the 1990s, computer and internet communications graced us with the age of information, where those holding the keys to unlock valuable consumer data rule supreme. Today, we’ve entered a brand new era of customer service: The age of the customer, which calls for technology and industry leaders to catch up to increasing customer demands. Innovations like virtual assistants, chatbots, drones, and self-service portals are beginning to play a huge role in meeting customer expectations. But before we can consider these tools successful, we must acknowledge that there is still plenty of room for improvement.
Each year companies lose an estimated ![[Video] 3 Takeaways from Our Google Hangout: Call Center Trends](https://fonolo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Video-3-Takeaways-from-Our-Google-Hangou.jpg "[Video] 3 Takeaways from Our Google Hangout: Call Center Trends")
Last week, Fonolo hosted yet another insightful Google Hangout, discussing the top 3 call center trends for 2016. This was our first ever hangout with just the Fonolo team. This fabulous panel shared their comments on where the contact center industry is heading this year. To save you some time, we’ve extracted video snippets showcasing highlights from the discussion.![[Slideshare] Predicting the Future of the Contact Center](https://fonolo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Slideshare-Predicting-the-Future-of-the-Contact-Center.png)
There are over 2 billion smartphones in use right now. And in developed countries, penetration is approaching 100%. Mobile phones have changed consumer behaviour more than any technology in recent memory, perhaps since the invention of the car.
