The Internet Flys With West Jet

I sent my friend off early this morning to Calgary, Alberta, to visit her ailing father. I remember Thomas Friedman talking about how he woke up to the 21st Century when even though he would be first at the Kiosk of SouthWest Airlines in the Airport to create his ticket he still did not board before people who would show up sometimes minutes before boarding. Why was this happening? They were buying their tickets online and then picking their seat at 12:01 a.m. on the day of the flight. Armed with this knowledge, we purchased my friends ticket with West Jet online and their policy is you can create and print your boarding pass, as well as choose your seat, 24 hours before the departure time of your flight. In our case, we went online at 7:01 a.m. the day before her flight. Everything went smoothly this morning and she is now in flight to Calgary.

The internet is not only about emails, blogs and e-commerce. What are you doing to make doing business with your business easier and much more enjoyable for your customers? The internet can do so much for your business in reducing costs that we tend to forget about how many human touch points we have built into our business processes that can be put online. The customer wins with better service and you win with a reduction to costs.