Hey Southwest…YNAC (You Need a Chatbot!)

What do you do in the grocery store when you have under 10 items? You stand in the express checkout line. Why? It’s faster than waiting behind folks shopping for large households with carts filled to the brim when you run out of milk and just want to pay for the carton in your hand.?

It’s the same with messy legacy systems. High priority service requests should not have to wait behind all the other service requests - especially when the high priority service requests apply to an emerging critical situation, say for example like coordinating airline staff holiday availability during a storm front. Southwest had to cancel over 60% of its flights because of its complicated software that matched crew members with aircraft?

Chatbots have been good at best but recent advances in AI and machine learning (see ChatGPT) enable excellent chatbot experiences and power a wide range of use cases.

Manage Staffing Availability Via Chatbot for a Quick Win

Southwest, we get it - you have a point-to-point logistics system rather than a hub-and-spoke system. This makes staffing availability complicated when you take into account aviation compliance rules. There may have been good reasons the system was designed this way when it was. Those of us who architect systems call this “technical debt.” You don’t have to pay down all your technical debt to fix the staffing problem that cascades to poor customer experiences. Avoid the big bowl of systems spaghetti caused by years of layering on complex patches and hard-coded logic.?

Well designed chatbots address specific user jobs to be done can be a secret weapon for enterprises. Chatbots pull and push data quickly to solve the problem with process rather than more technical complexity. Focus on the supply side of your internal labor marketplace. Use a staffing chatbot to let staff input and change their availability and schedules on the fly. Offer bonuses for working hard to staff routes on certain times. In fact, this is how the routing engines at Uber and other rideshare and modern delivery apps work.?

An internal staffing availability chatbot can “pull” availability and “push” timely alerts and offers to staff. Some examples include:

• “Need to update your schedule?”
• "We have understaffed routes with bonus shifts available. Interested?"
• "Need a flight attendant for a flight from [city] to [city] on [date]. Can you work it?"
• "Bonus shifts available for pilots and flight attendants. Want more info?"
• “You are currently eligible for 12 routes. Want to update your [compliance level] for 10 more routes?"

These chatbot features may require some back end integration but they will be focused on specific services that prioritize customer and staff benefits, and can be carefully architected for performance.

Conversational interfaces are awesomely extensible

Chatbots can help airline staff and customers circumvent system delays just like a global entry pass gets you through airport security. A well designed chatbot platform can also service other staff and passenger intents, such as:

• “Do you want to complete the [training] ? It will take 2 hours?”
• "There is an issue with the in-flight entertainment system on flight number [x]. Can someone look into it?"
• “Where’s my bag? I’m in Seattle…[Where would you like it sent?]”
• “Miss your connecting flight and need re-routing?” (with failover to agent)?
• “Are you willing to give up your seat on [flight] for [bonus]?”

You don’t have to be Southwest or an Airline to Leverage Chatbots?

The example above was tailored to Southwest Airlines given their recent delays but well designed chatbot platforms can be leveraged for a variety of uses across industries. A number of industries have experimented with and incorporated chatbots into their business processes, including banking, travel/hospitality, health/wellness, retail/ eCommerce, telecom and government.

Chatbots are finally good now and can solve a variety of B2B2C use cases way beyond workforce management

Here are some examples where chatbot platforms can now be incredibly useful, by function (all can be B2B, B2C, B2B2C)

• Inform internal and external stakeholders on product benefits, new collateral?
• Feedback loop closure for sales, marketing, logistics teams with customer/product data?
• Augment and scale teams e.g. sales, operations, services
• Discover products and solutions for personalized intents
• Onboard staff or customers in quick, standardized and measurable steps
• Support the entire staff, customer or partner lifecycle

Here are the Top 5 key takeaways for business leaders seeking to leverage chatbots to pay down technical debt:

1. Chatbots can use process to circumvent technical debt
2. Chatbots can leverage best practices and innovation across industries?
3. Chatbots “pull” and “push” timely, specific, high-value data
4. Focus on quick wins e.g. shore up staff supply to meet rising demand
5. A well-designed chatbot platform is extensible to many B2B and B2C jobs to be done

About the author: Ariel Jalali

I’m an expert in conversational commerce and chatbots - probably top 10 on the planet. I’ve been a venture-backed founder, operator and advisor in the space since 2014. I am the founder of Paragon Tech - we provide CTO/CPO advisory to leading PE/VC funds and companies. I also co-founded Labthree which is innovating products conversational commerce attribution. I teach applied AI/ML part time at institutions such as UCLA to keep the saw sharp and inspire the next cohort of business leaders. My DMs are open if you’d like to say hi. You can schedule time during my office hours via this link: https://calendly.com/paragontech/chatbots