Jenn (she prefers to use only her first name) works for Alaska Airlines, where she's been on the job virtually around the clock for more than a month.
Not that she's complaining. The airline said it had tried to give her everything she's asked for: access to every shred of information they possess, a free place to stay, even a dog named Denali.
And though they don't pay her a red cent, they invested big bucks to make her the most efficient customer service agent they've ever hired.
You might even say Jenn is the new "It Girl" -- but, says Steve Jarvis, vice president of marketing and customer experience at Alaska Airlines, the "it" in this case would stand for "information technology."
Jenn is not a real girl at all, of course. Her "parents" were a host of software developers for Spokane, Wash.-based NextIT, which specializes in creating innovations in the artificial intelligence and knowledge-based customer service arena.
Jarvis said that the airline, already known in the industry as a top technology innovator, realized it needed to improve customer search opportunities. Their solution was Jenn.
"All this came from a decision that we needed a look into search capabilities," Jarvis said. "Alaska Air was the first domestic carrier to book tickets on the Internet. But we went for many years without search capabilities, mainly because search didn't work well. We've always prided ourselves on usability, but now over half of our bookings are on the Internet, and we needed to address ease of use and navigation."
Jenn, the first "virtual assistant" employed by the U.S. airline industry, was born of the realization that technological advances had made it possible to combine searches across a vast number of databases with almost instant responses to questions typed by users into the "Ask Jenn" pop-up window.
Dovetail that with the sheer amount of knowledge available from those databases, input from customer service representatives in company call centers and information from customers themselves and the result, said Jarvis, is a technology that "leapfrogs" existing alternatives.
"Most knowledge base is linear," said Jarvis, who's been poking around in technology innovation for years. "It gives a best guess. This looks more at contextual matters. It works more like the human brain, which makes the search an order of magnitude better."
Human traits were incorporated into Jenn by her creators, but marketing played a part, too. Even her name was a group effort stemming from focus group research that showed the name "Jennifer" is perceived by most people as a moniker typically associated with a kind, happy and helpful person.
Jenn's personality was also created from testing, research and customer service experience. Her voice -- she answers questions both in text and speech if users keep their computer speakers turned on -- is that of a real customer service agent at Alaska Air.
Jenn can be as pleasant as the proverbial girl next door, but she doesn't put up with funny business. She's accommodating if you stray from relevant questions for a bit. In fact, she'll tell you about her virtual dog, that she's "currently single" and that she's without siblings for the moment. But get suggestive, and she promptly reminds you that she doesn't respond to risque remarks. (See Travel Weekly's "interview" with Jenn, In the Hot Seat .)
That doesn't seem to offend anyone. Since her first day on the job in February, she's gotten nothing but compliments, Jarvis said. Not only are customers aggressively seeking her out, perhaps attracted to her lovely voice and perky personality, but even longtime employees are turning to Jenn for help in finding information about the company she just joined. Her question-answer format may even replace company manuals some day, Jarvis said.
"What Jenn can do is search dynamically," he said. "She can pull up itineraries for you. You can ask the price of an L.A.-to-Seattle flight next week, and she pulls that information from the databases. So add a dynamic personality, and we have something that is along the line of customer innovation. We're real proud of her."
Jenn was first launched internally so that customer service agents could train her to give appropriate responses. As a result, she is getting wiser over time. Now, Jarvis said, she is bringing a consistency to answers across the company that didn't exist before. She's even lightened his load as employees turn to her, instead of to him, for answers.
"And she'll only get better from here," he predicted.
Though Jenn's newfound popularity might derive from the novelty of a virtual customer service agent and the fact that she's fun to talk to, her real value to the company is functionality. An aggressive searcher, she's tireless in her quest for information, and she almost always finds what she wants. She truly is one woman who seems to have all the answers.
Best of all, she doesn't mind if you wake her up in the middle of the night after a long day at work, just to chat.
To contact reporter Dan Luzadder, send e-mail to [email protected].