Growing companies have many priorities to juggle, but Avelo Airlines is focused on charting the customer journey as its most important path forward.
The young, Houston-based airline is expanding quickly. Since it’s first flight in 2021, Avelo has grown nonstop and currently flies to 49 destinations spanning 23 states, Puerto Rico, and two international locations (Jamaica and Mexico).
Avelo is known for its low airfares, but cost savings alone aren’t enough to attract and retain customers in the increasingly competitive airline industry. A frictionless experience, across all touchpoints and channels, is what keeps customers coming back.
Here R.J. Sampson, Jr., the airline’s director of e-commerce, discusses how Avelo works to delight customers on every leg of their journey.
Customer Strategist: What does Avelo do to stand out from the competition and grow loyalty in a competitive industry?
R.J. Sampson Jr.: Customer experience sets our brand apart by delivering value beyond just low
fares. We focus on making travel simple, efficient, enjoyable, and affordable, ensuring every interaction — from booking to arrival — is smooth and customer-friendly.
By prioritizing convenience, reliability, and friendly service, we hope to create an experience that leaves a lasting positive impression, making us the preferred choice for travelers seeking both affordability and quality.
When it comes to growing loyalty, we strive to create a reliable and affordable airline experience that goes beyond expectations, both in person and digitally. From booking online to managing reservations and receiving flight updates, we're continually working to make our digital experience as seamless and user-friendly as possible.
By consistently improving these experiences, we hope to build lasting trust and turn first-time customers into loyal advocates.
CS: What does the customer journey look like at Avelo? What channels does the brand use to engage with fliers?
RS: Avelo’s customer journey begins with discovery through advertising, social media, and PR/traditional media. Once they become aware of Avelo, we work to earn their consideration via digital marketing, email campaigns, and SEO. When they’re ready to book, our website and mobile app make it easy to convert them into customers.
After booking, customers receive trip details via email and SMS. They can check in 24 hours before departure through our website or app and stay informed with flight status updates via SMS. Our friendly in-flight team ensures a great experience onboard. For irregular operations, like delays or cancelations, customers will receive SMS and emails with updates.
After the trip, we gather feedback through surveys and continue engaging customers via email, digital marketing, and social media to encourage future travel with us.
[In general] email and SMS are the most efficient and preferred channels for Avelo to communicate with our customers. We do have a customer support center for those who want to speak to a human but, for automation purposes, email and SMS are faster.
CS: Is the company integrating AI into its CX at all? Where do you see AI’s greatest potential?
RS: Only experimentally; [we have] nothing in production. We’re focusing our AI experimentation on enhancing customer self-service, though we can’t share specifics at the moment.
As a low-cost, high-value airline, we see AI's greatest potential in enhancing customer experiences, particularly through self-service and support. We're also exploring how AI can help us better understand customer insights and trends to continuously improve the overall experience.
CS: How important is automation in the customer journey?
RS: Everything our customers do with Avelo, from booking and check-in to receiving Avelo Travel Funds (money customers receive when a reservation is canceled and can use on a future flight), is supported by our automated systems. We have teams to ensure automation is working correctly for our customers but, to streamline everything for our customers, automation is key.
Automation, for me, is all about ensuring data flows seamlessly across our various systems. In an airline, we rely on multiple technologies and it’s crucial that data moves efficiently between them. This flow triggers automated events, such as customer communication journeys or flight information updates, which move from the booking engine to our reservation and reporting systems.
We define clear processes to guide our automation efforts and aim to automate as much as possible to improve our efficiency.
[From the customers’ perspective], by leveraging technology to offer user-friendly self-service tools, we empower our customers to easily manage their travel. This approach reduces costs while delivering the simple, streamlined experience our customers expect.
CS: How do you keep CX top of mind as the airline expands its footprint? Are there any challenges?
RS: Our user experience team continuously analyzes and optimizes our digital channels to enhance both efficiency and user experience.
The only challenge, if you want to call it that, is keeping up with new technology and making sure our customers are aware as we adapt to these methods.
