How United Airlines Uses Cresta to Deliver Real-Time Insights, Faster Service, and a More Human Customer Experience
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15%
improvement in average handle time
50%
improvement in customer response time
About United Airlines
United Airlines is one of the largest airlines in the world, connecting millions of customers across a global network every year. Behind that scale is a customer support organization charged with one of the most important jobs in the business: being the human voice of United when customers need help, whether that's a routine question or a moment that could define their trip.
That organization is in the middle of a long-term transformation, one focused on rethinking what customer support should look like for the next decade and beyond.
"My team's mission is to look at how do we want to transform our customer support experience to help customers for the next 10 to 20 years," said Rachel Walker, Managing Director of Service Transformation.
Featured in this story:
- Rachel Walker, Managing Director, Service Transformation, United Airlines
- Asif Majeed, Sr. Manager, Global Contact Centers CX, Performance & Analytics, United Airlines
- Brandy Maxwell, Sr. Manager, Customer Insights & Policy Execution, United Airlines
The challenge: An anecdotal view of a real-time business
The customer support center sits in a uniquely valuable position inside United. It's where the company hears, in the most direct way possible, what customers are experiencing.
"The customer support center is extremely valuable because that's where we hear the voice of the customer," Rachel said.
But hearing the voice of the customer and acting on it at scale are two different things. Before Cresta, United's view of what customers were calling about, why, and how the team should respond was largely anecdotal.
"Before Cresta, most of the information that was close to real time was anecdotal," Rachel said. "It really wasn't quantifiable."
That gap lead to real consequences when the business needed to move fast.
"When we had real-time events, we really weren't able to easily get to the information and understand what our customer's needs were so that we could make quick policy decisions that benefited both our customers and United Airlines," said Brandy Maxwell.
At the same time, the agent experience was evolving. As routine inquiries moved into self-service, the calls that did make it to an agent were getting harder.
"As basic transactions are being automated for our customers, our agents are receiving more complex inquiries and requests from our customers," said Asif Majeed.
United needed a way to bring real-time intelligence into both sides of that equation: giving the business a live view of customer needs, and giving agents the tools to handle increasingly complex conversations with confidence.
The solution
United partnered with Cresta to bring AI-powered intelligence into every customer conversation. The deployment spans three connected capabilities working together:
- Cresta Insights and AI Analyst give the Customer Insights and Policy Execution team a real-time view of what customers are saying, what they need, and how the business should respond.
- Cresta Agent Assist gives agents in-the-moment support through hints, auto-summarization, knowledge-based assist, and suggested responses, so they can focus on the customer instead of the system.
- A platform built for transformation, not just a tool, that connects what United is learning from customer conversations to the operational decisions the business makes every day.
Why Cresta
For Rachel, the test of any technology partnership is whether it delivers something the business can actually point to. With Cresta, that answer came quickly.
"I would say Cresta's impact in United Airlines has helped us see that conversational AI is real and we're seeing real results from it," Rachel said. "It's not just smoke and mirrors, it's not just one use case. We've actually seen real results that have had true business impact."
For Asif, the measure is even simpler.
"When I think about Cresta, I think about surpassing the ROI that I had expected," he said.
What's next: more energy, more bandwidth, more human moments
For Rachel and the Service Transformation team, the work isn't just about efficiency. It's about freeing agents to be the part of United that customers remember.
"Because that's what most customers really remember, how somebody made them feel and that connection they had, they felt heard and that somebody was able to solve that for them," Rachel said. "We're trying to give those agents more energy and bigger bandwidth to do those things."
That's the promise behind everything United is building with Cresta: customer experience where agents have the tools to focus on what matters most, and a business that can hear and act on the voice of the customer in real time.
Results
Cresta Insights and AI Analyst
Para el equipo de Brandy, el cambio de la anécdota a los datos en tiempo real ha sido transformador. Customer Insights and Policy Execution ahora puede pasar de la pregunta a la respuesta en minutos, revelando lo que los clientes realmente necesitan e incorporando esa inteligencia directamente en las decisiones que United toma cada día.
“Cresta ha cambiado las reglas del juego para nuestro programa Insights-to-Action por varias razones. Número uno, que podemos acceder fácilmente a los insights de nuestros clientes y a cuáles son sus necesidades. Número dos, que podemos entender mejor los eventos en tiempo real y lo que debemos hacer para ayudar a nuestros clientes a través de esos eventos en tiempo real. Y número tres, que podemos mejorar nuestro producto en función de la información que estamos escuchando tanto de nuestros clientes como de nuestros agentes en las conversaciones que revisamos.”
Acción en tiempo real sobre eventos en tiempo real
El mayor avance ha sido la capacidad de actuar en el momento. Cuando algo está sucediendo en el negocio, el equipo puede verlo, entenderlo y responder, en lugar de esperar a que los datos se pongan al día.
“Lo que Cresta nos ha permitido hacer ahora y que antes no podíamos es análisis en tiempo real, insights en tiempo real sobre los que podemos actuar rápidamente y ver el resultado de inmediato.”
Cresta Agent Assist
A medida que las conversaciones con los clientes se vuelven más complejas, United está equipando a los agentes con el apoyo en el momento que necesitan para gestionar cada llamada con confianza. El impacto medible ha sido significativo: una mejora del 15% en el tiempo promedio de gestión, que se tradujo en una mejora del 50% en el tiempo de respuesta al cliente, todo ello elevando la calidad de la propia interacción.
“Algunos de los impactos medibles que hemos visto desde que implementamos Cresta son una mejora del 15% en el tiempo de gestión, que ha llevado a una mejora del 50% en el tiempo de respuesta al cliente. Todo esto se suma a menos tecleo, mejor gramática y respuestas más consistentes para nuestros clientes.”
Autoservicio más rápido para necesidades rutinarias
Cuando los insights de clientes revelaron un tipo de contacto de alto volumen que en realidad no requería un agente, United pudo actuar en consecuencia y construir una vía de autoservicio que los clientes realmente preferían.
“Vimos una reducción del 50% en los contactos de ese tipo porque los clientes podían ver fácilmente lo que necesitaban hacer y tomar la decisión por su cuenta sin hablar con un agente.”
Decisiones respaldadas por datos reales
En cada equipo que utiliza Cresta se ha producido el mismo cambio: las decisiones que antes se apoyaban en suposiciones ahora se basan en una imagen real de lo que dicen los clientes.
“Cuando nos pasamos a Cresta, pudimos dejar de hacer suposiciones, usar datos reales para entender las necesidades de nuestros clientes y luego tomar decisiones basadas en esos datos reales.”