JetBlue Gets Email Rollout Right
Kudos to Nate Quigley, the chief executive of LiveTV, which is managing JetBlue's rollout of new email and instant messaging services. Quigley is quoted in today's New York Times: "Sometimes, you just have to put things out there and see what happens when people try to use it."
Admitting that a new product or service isn't perfect isn't just a good strategy for heading off customer grumbling. It's an acknowledgement of reality, and a smart approach to pushing innovation. For customers, its risk free; for those who want to stay connected while they're in the air, spotty access is an improvement over no access at all, and it doesn't cost anything. For JetBlue, rolling out the service now provides an opportunity to work out the bugs (as Quigley noted in the Times story)-and to get real feedback about customer demand-while competitors catch up.
I don't think IT departments try hard enough to push out new services so broadly, whether internally or externally. Name the last time your IT department threw a new tool out there and said to employees here, use this, tell us what you think about it. The tendency is to hold new apps close and test them with hand-picked, tech-savvy end users. But that approach no longer makes sense when apps are web-based and everyone has ideas for how IT can improve business processes.
In this case, JetBlue will try one plane on different routes. I'm sure they have some idea of the passenger demographics for those flights, but what about their email habits? How many connections will it take to crash the system? What happens when someone tries to download an attachment? (I don't have high hopes there. I don't usually have the patience for that when my feet are on the ground.)
If JetBlue is responsive to customer feedback and fixes problems iteratively, it can stay a step ahead of competitors who won't be rolling out similar services for several months, or who are betting on making a splash with more extensive, fee-based Web access. There's nothing stopping JetBlue from offering Web access later, once the kinks are worked out of email - and customers clamor for more services. And maybe those customers, in on the development process, will have ideas that the people at JetBlue never even though of.
Just as long as they don't allow phone calls.
Print
Admitting that a new product or service isn't perfect isn't just a good strategy for heading off customer grumbling. It's an acknowledgement of reality, and a smart approach to pushing innovation. For customers, its risk free; for those who want to stay connected while they're in the air, spotty access is an improvement over no access at all, and it doesn't cost anything. For JetBlue, rolling out the service now provides an opportunity to work out the bugs (as Quigley noted in the Times story)-and to get real feedback about customer demand-while competitors catch up.
I don't think IT departments try hard enough to push out new services so broadly, whether internally or externally. Name the last time your IT department threw a new tool out there and said to employees here, use this, tell us what you think about it. The tendency is to hold new apps close and test them with hand-picked, tech-savvy end users. But that approach no longer makes sense when apps are web-based and everyone has ideas for how IT can improve business processes.
In this case, JetBlue will try one plane on different routes. I'm sure they have some idea of the passenger demographics for those flights, but what about their email habits? How many connections will it take to crash the system? What happens when someone tries to download an attachment? (I don't have high hopes there. I don't usually have the patience for that when my feet are on the ground.)
If JetBlue is responsive to customer feedback and fixes problems iteratively, it can stay a step ahead of competitors who won't be rolling out similar services for several months, or who are betting on making a splash with more extensive, fee-based Web access. There's nothing stopping JetBlue from offering Web access later, once the kinks are worked out of email - and customers clamor for more services. And maybe those customers, in on the development process, will have ideas that the people at JetBlue never even though of.
Just as long as they don't allow phone calls.
What is Tech Briefcase?
TechBriefcase is a new, free service where IT Professionals can Search, Store and Share IT white papers and content like this. Learn more
Bookmark content
Speed up your research efforts with content across the web.
Search and Store
Find the white papers you need. Create folders for any topic.
View Anywhere
Open your briefcase on your iPhone, tablet or desktop. Share with colleagues.
Most Discussed Posts
Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most significant game changers to hit the technology landscape in the past 20 years. With this massive expansion of the cloud, the perception of the IT organization is shifting from a utility player to a change agent. This eBook breaks down five ways progressive organizations are using cloud-based IT Management solutions to help drive innovation and become more strategic, including: adding visibility and analytics, speeding up time-to-value, lowering costs, improving prioritization, and providing a blueprint for future cloud deployments.
Read the white paper to see how IBM helped Citigroup deliver new services and enhancements to their 200 million customers faster.
There are 3 ways to modernize legacy applications: rewrite completely, acquire packaged solutions or migrate existing code. This paper explains why it's best to migrate and how IBM® Rational® software can help.
Accommodating specific lines of business can result in a hybrid ecosystem of applications and servers. The resulting complexity of this architecture makes for an environment that is costly to maintain and difficult to change when addressing new challenges.
This whitepaper will help you to define a mobile device passcode policy. Security managers must attempt to reconcile two opposing goals. They must: 1) create a passcode policy that is strong enough to protect the device if it is lost or stolen, while: 2) not annoying users with needless length or complexity.
This whitepaper, authored by The Radicati Group, looks at the key reasons organizations should consider moving to a cloud-based archiving solution. Email archiving solutions enable organizations to store, monitor, and collect electronic data exchanged by their users to comply with internal policies and regulations.
ATERNITY will showcase a 30-minute demo on how Fortune 500 companies are leveraging its award-winning FPI Platform to deliver a user-centric approach to Proactive IT Management.
For businesses to move forward and tap into the ever-expanding universe of Internet users and network-enabled devices, it's critical to learn how to make the transition to IPv6. Learn the critical steps your organization must take to make a seamless transition-and keep your business world connected.
Learn how IT teams can protect against spear phishing tactics. Harry Sverdlove, chief technology officer of Bit9 offers a frank discussion about spear phishing - the most common technique used in today's advanced attacks.
Learn how to build a solid business case for your migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux so you can run leaner, innovate faster, be more flexible and own the New Now.
Social media isn't about you; it's about everything around you. As you consider how your customers want to communicate with you, social media is something that can't be ignored. But what should your strategy be? Is social media "just another channel?" What kind of a plan makes sense for your contact center and for your customers? Join our experts as they share their insight and research results.
Hardware tokens were a popular method of strong authentication in past years but the cumbersome provisioning and distribution tasks, high support requirements and replacement costs have limited their growth. The additional log-in steps that hardware tokens require and the resulting user frustrations have limited adoption and make them impractical for larger scale partner and customer applications.
Sponsored Links
