Alaska Lands Spot Among Most Innovative Companies

Airline wins technology award for virtual assistant ‘Jenn'

12/16/2008 5:57 p.m.

Alaska Airlines has been named a 2008 InfoWorld 100 award winner, recognizing the carrier's leadership in using technology to make travel easier. The annual award by the respected trade publication honors 100 companies for "information technology projects that exemplify intelligent, creative uses of technology to meet business and technical objectives."

Alaska was selected for successfully implementing "Jenn," a virtual expert on alaskaair.com who answers travel-related questions posed by customers and employees.

"We're thrilled to have received this award," said Steve Jarvis, vice president of marketing, sales and customer experience. "We're getting rave reviews on Jenn from both customers and employees, and we continue to find ways to expand her reach."

Jenn was created using Active Agent technology developed by the Spokane-based software firm Next IT. Launched in early 2008, she is the first virtual assistant introduced by a U.S. airline.

"The results of our collaboration with Alaska have been astounding," Next IT CEO Fred Brown said. "We are changing the landscape of interactive self-service and the business world is taking note. We're pleased that Alaska Airlines' innovative approach to technology has been recognized by InfoWorld."

Jenn has been averaging about 135,000 chat sessions a month, with a significant increase in November to 171,000 sessions. Among the most frequently asked questions are:

How do I change my reservation?
How do I buy a ticket?
How many miles do I need for an award ticket?
Questions regarding checked luggage.

"Jenn receives a lot of ‘thank you' and ‘you're great' messages from customers," said Theresa Miller, supervisor of business travel programs for Mileage Plan and the voice of Jenn. "Customers and employees also tell us about areas where we can improve, which we work on daily."

Miller's team recently visited all Alaska and Horizon Air call centers to re-familiarize agents with Jenn and how to introduce her to customers. "Our goal is to make Jenn part of the daily lives of our reservations sales agents and customer service agents," Miller said.

Cindy Mitchell, senior project manager for Jenn, said she realized how useful the virtual assistant can be when a relative needed travel information.

"My niece called me as she was packing for a trip to ask about getting liquids through security," Mitchell said. "I gave her what I thought was the correct answer, then I realized how much easier it would have been to say, ‘Just go to alaskaair.com and ask Jenn.' If every employee did that, our customers would always be assured of getting the most current and consistent information."

Nominations for the award were submitted by InfoWorld readers, technology partners and end-user companies, and this year's winners were announced in mid-November. To be considered, projects had to use multiple technologies in innovative ways to serve well-defined business goals. Profiles of winners, along with InfoWorld's editorial analysis of each project, can be found on the InfoWorld Web site.