NBC features United Airlines Agent on Demand

United Airlines Sought to Redefine Its Customer Service – Upstream Works Delivered a Game-Changer

NBC features United Airlines Agent on Demand Service with Upstream Works and Cisco

September 5, 2023 –According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Labor Day weekend 2023 was the year’s 3rd busiest travel period. For United Airlines, the holiday would mean managing over 2.8 million travelers between the Friday before and the Tuesday after the weekend. It would be the perfect time to promote its latest customer service solution – Agent on Demand (AOD).

United knew that to make AOD really work it would need to be built for its customers to simply “click and connect.” To make this vision a reality United brought in Upstream Works and leveraged its Cisco foundation to design the service. For travelers today, United’s Agent on Demand is up and running and can be seen being promoted on large QR codes prominently displayed in airports on digital signage with messages like “Need Travel Assistance?” or “Get Travel Help Now.”

News of the service from its Chicago O’Hare hub caught the attention of the local NBC affiliate station in Chicago, which featured United’s Agent on Demand service in a piece on Labor Day travel. You can see that piece here:

For United, one very important feature of AOD was accessibility. To address this, Upstream Works developed the solution to seamlessly share video, chat or audio based on preferences and to manage over 100 different languages into single chat messaging. As a spokesperson for United put it, “This leveled up our ability to serve those with disabilities really quickly; it’s a huge win – for us and the customer – that whatever language is spoken on the phone can be handled with that agent rather than wasting time tracking down someone who can communicate with that particular customer.”

As we quickly saw, the key to success was to realize United’s goal of simplicity. As Rob McDougall, our CEO, said, “We had to consider the vagueries of different customer’s cell phones. For instance, when a cell phone browser is minimized the system alerts the customer through text message that an agent is ready to communicate, while notifying the agent that the customer is not ready to take messages.”

As airlines and other large organizations look to their customer service engagement strategies, providing on-demand agents to handle specific tasks could shorten wait times and provide more knowledgeable information that quickly satisfies customer requests.

About Upstream Works | www.upstreamworks.com

Upstream Works provides enterprise-ready omnichannel contact center desktop solutions that simplify and improve the agent and customer experience. Our flexible, agent-first desktop solutions support digital transformation, innovation, and business growth, and enable contact centers to operationalize artificial intelligence (AI) while leveraging existing systems and investments. For over 20 years, Upstream Works has helped companies around the world and across industries improve operational efficiency, agent effectiveness, customer experience and business outcomes.

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For more information, contact:

Escalate PR for Upstream Works
upstream@escalatepr.com