# Washington's Bold Move to Enhance Public Services

For two decades, embattled consumers knew having investigative journalist **Jesse Jones** on their side could very likely make things right for them. Now, **Gov. Bob Ferguson** is counting on Jones to level up such success for residents across the state.

Ferguson renamed and rebranded Results Washington, an obscure data-driven creation of his predecessor, into a **'customer experience hub'** called Your Washington that launched this week. He hired Jones in January to lead the transformation, which became formal with Ferguson's signing of an executive order on Sept. 3.

"Washingtonians know that when there is a problem to be solved, you get Jesse," Ferguson said in January. "Government must work better. Jesse's track record makes him an ideal candidate for this role."

The executive order directs agencies under Ferguson's control to provide Your Washington staff with an overview of how they account for **customer experience** and track their delivery of key services. In six months, each agency must begin implementing a **Customer Experience Improvement Plan**. Quarterly progress reports must be filed with Your Washington.

"In my inaugural address, I promised to improve customer service in state government. We're going to make it happen," Ferguson posted on social media after signing the executive order.

Ferguson's effort follows a series of initiatives along these lines that Washington governors have pursued over the past three decades.

As part of the governor's order, Jones and his staff are working with WaTech, the state's IT agency, to expand wa.gov, the state's existing online portal to state services, programs and information.

The Your Washington website is a place where residents can share their experiences and state employees can learn best practices for serving the public.

Jones said there are plans for a hotline for people to call to leave complaints and compliments about government agencies. There is also going to be a small studio where "folks can come in and tell their customer service story," he said.

And, each quarter, two state employees "who embody the spirit of service excellence" will be recognized. They'll be chosen based on the nominations from the public, Jones said.

"Our role is to assist, embrace and help these agencies do their best with customer experience," said Jones, who joined Ferguson following 20 years as an investigative and consumer reporter with two Seattle television stations. "It is a huge undertaking for a group of 10 people," he said.

## In Search of Better Customer Service

Customers, in the vision of Your Washington, are "anyone who interacts with a state program or service" including residents, businesses, organizations, and agency employees.

Customer experience, or CX for short, is defined as "a shared mindset" in the design of services for those who use and deliver them.

The website has a resource page with links to research and tools for better understanding the mindset of customers. There is information on practices such as influence mapping and empathy mapping to help employees get a broader picture of those affected by a potential decision.

Jones, in a statement on the website, says customer experience "doesn't start at the front counter – IT STARTS INSIDE. How leaders support staff, and how managers treat their teams, directly shapes the experience we deliver to the public."

## A New Way to Address an Old Idea

Ferguson is the latest Washington governor with a scheme to make state agencies relevant and responsive.

In the late 90s, Gov. Gary Locke unfurled priorities of government to figure out what services people most wanted and needed from the state, and how to best fund them.

Gov. Christine Gregoire followed with Government Management Accountability and Performance, which she introduced in February 2005, her second month in office. It called for developing "clear, relevant and easy-to-understand measures" to show whether programs were successful. Department managers to front-line employees were required to work "creatively and cooperatively" across agency lines "to improve government service."

Then came Gov. Jay Inslee with Results Washington in September 2013, his first year on the job. Its team did deep dives in data collection, then used findings to craft policies in the areas of education, economy, clean energy and environment, health and safety, and government accountability. A lot of the data is retained on the Your Washington site.

With Results Washington, the director was responsible for "implementing a continued customer-oriented approach to state government" centered on expanding public participation "in efforts to improve our state."

For his endeavor, Ferguson is counting on Jones' media savvy to further enhance public interest and awareness in such work.

"Washingtonians deserve efficient, responsive, and person-focused government services that respect their time and meet their needs," Ferguson said in an emailed statement. "This executive order is the next step in our efforts to ensure we deliver."

Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson wants former jounalist Jesse Jones to direct efforts to improve how the state serves the public.

How a Former Investigative Journalist is Revolutionizing Government Customer Service in Washington

# How Top Companies Excel in Customer Service

In the competitive world of business, **exceptional customer service** is a key differentiator. Companies like Netflix, Zappos, and Salesforce have mastered the art of making customers adore them through **personalization** and innovative strategies.

## The Power of Personalization

Personalization isn't just about using a customer's name; it's about tailoring experiences to individual needs. Netflix uses advanced algorithms to recommend content, making users feel understood and valued. Zappos goes above and beyond with their **24/7 customer support**, often surprising customers with unexpected gestures that build loyalty.

## Learning from Success Stories

Southwest Airlines' recent comeback to top the 2025 airline rankings showcases how focusing on **customer satisfaction** can lead to remarkable turnarounds. By prioritizing transparent communication and employee empowerment, they've set a new standard in the industry.

## Key Strategies for Remote Customer Service Jobs

For those in **remote customer service roles**, adopting these practices can enhance performance. Emphasize **active listening**, use technology to personalize interactions, and always aim to exceed expectations. Remember, a happy customer is a loyal one.

![Image of a customer service representative smiling while assisting a client](https://example.com/image.jpg) // Note: Original image not relevant, replaced with a generic placeholder for context.

Crochet threw six strong innings, allowing three runs on five hits while striking out 12.

Unveiling the Secrets Behind Elite Customer Service: What Top Companies Do Differently

# The Evolution of Customer Service in the AI Era

**Artificial intelligence** is revolutionizing the call center industry, but it's not replacing humans entirely. Armen Kirakosian, a call center agent from Athens, Greece, recalls the old days of frustrating searches through menus and handwritten notes. Now, with AI, he has full customer profiles at his fingertips, allowing him to focus on solving problems rather than administrative tasks.

## The Current Landscape

Roughly 3 million Americans work in call centers, handling billions of inquiries annually. Companies like TTEC provide outsourced customer service, but the job is often thankless—half of agents quit within a year due to stress and monotony. Much of the work involves "break/fix" scenarios, where something is wrong and needs resolution.

## AI's Role and Limitations

AI has automated routine tasks, leading to job losses, but predictions of mass layoffs are overstated. Humans are still essential for complex issues. For example, Klarna replaced 700 customer service roles with AI in 2023 but saw a drop in satisfaction and had to rehire some employees for cases like identity theft.

Gadi Shamia of Replicant envisions an "AI-first contact center" where AI handles most conversations, and highly trained humans tackle the toughest problems. This hybrid approach is becoming reality.

## Improving the Customer Experience

Traditional interactive voice response (IVR) systems, where customers navigate menus, are notoriously frustrating. Customers often "zero out" by pressing zero to reach a human, only to be transferred repeatedly.

New technologies aim to eliminate IVR. OpenAI's "ChatGPT Agent" can understand complex requests, and Bank of America's chatbot "Erica" has been used 3 billion times, offering predictive and analytical help while seamlessly transferring to humans when needed.

James Bednar of TTEC believes AI will soon route customers directly to the right person without menus, making "zeroing out" a thing of the past.

Legislation like the "Keep Call Centers in America Act" pushes for clearer access to human agents and incentives for U.S.-based jobs, reflecting public impatience with automated systems.

NEW YORK — Armen Kirakosian remembers the frustrations of his first job as a call center agent nearly 10 years ago: the aggravated customers, the...

How AI is Transforming Call Centers: The Surprising Truth About Human vs. Machine

## Southwest Airlines Soars Amid Falling Airline Customer Service Scores

After years of operational struggles, **Southwest Airlines** has reclaimed its throne as the best-performing U.S. carrier. The Dallas-based carrier topped the 2025 Airline Quality Rating (AQR), proving that sometimes the old-school approach to airline service still works.

While Southwest was fixing its problems, former industry darling **Delta Air Lines** was busy creating new ones. The Atlanta carrier plummeted from first place in 2022 to seventh in 2024 — the biggest drop of any major airline.

"Southwest is the only airline that improved every measure, every year from 2022 to 2024," says Andrea Irish, an assistant professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's Prescott campus, who now authors the annual report. "They earned the number one rank by actually getting better at everything."

The 2025 Airline Quality Rating, now in its 34th year, uses government data to rank airlines on what matters most to passengers: **on-time arrivals**, **baggage handling**, **bumping passengers off flights**, and **customer complaints**. This year’s results covering 2023 and 2024, which were shared exclusively with Forbes, will be released tomorrow.

### Here's how the 10 major U.S. airlines ranked for 2024
1. Southwest Airlines (-0.03)
2. Alaska Airlines (-0.79)
3. Hawaiian Airlines (-0.86)
4. Allegiant Airlines (-1.43)
5. United Airlines (-1.89)
6. JetBlue Airways (-2.29)
7. Delta Air Lines (-2.56)
8. Spirit Airlines (-3.21)
9. American Airlines (-3.33)
10. Frontier Airlines (-6.27)

The AQR uses a weighted formula that combines all four performance metrics into a single score. Higher scores are worse — so, for example, Southwest's winning score of -0.03 was dramatically better than last-place Frontier's -6.27.

### The big winner: Southwest’s comeback story
Southwest's rise to the top marks a dramatic return to form after its December 2022 operational meltdown, which canceled 16,900 flights, stranded 2 million passengers, and resulted in a record $140 million fine.

That crisis exposed the airline's outdated operations but also forced a reckoning, leading to a deliberate, company-wide "mindset change," according to Justin Jones, Southwest's executive vice president of operations.

The strategy was simple but effective: focus on running “the operation with as high a completion factor as we possibly could” to ensure schedule predictability. It was backed by a massive investment of over **$1.5 billion** targeting winter operations, cross-team collaboration, and technology resilience. Jones detailed new de-icing equipment, dedicated crews, and a central dashboard so all departments can see in real-time how their decisions impact the entire network.

The results speak for themselves: the airline improved its on-time performance from 73.2 percent in 2022 to 78.6 percent in 2024, slashed denied boardings, and posted the industry’s lowest complaint rate (1.71 per 100,000 passengers).

Despite this operational success, Jones acknowledges a new challenge: a perception gap fueled by the airline’s recent introduction of fees for checked bags. While the policy hasn't harmed operational metrics, it has increased stress in customer-employee interactions at the gate.

Jones says Southwest has a plan to close the gap.

“We're going to make sure that our policies and procedures match our customer service priority,” he says, noting that the goal is to improve the experience without resorting to the aggressive enforcement tactics common on other carriers.

### A dramatic fall for Delta after IT disaster
Delta's customer service collapse may be the report's most surprising revelation. The airline that was once the gold standard for service saw its complaint rate more than triple, from 2.66 per 100,000 passengers in 2022 to 10.01 in 2024.

What happened? Despite maintaining solid on-time performance (consistently over 80 percent for all three years), customer complaints skyrocketed.

"From 2022 through 2024, Delta moved from first to seventh, which is the biggest drop of any airline," Irish notes.

Delta blames a global IT outage last summer for its performance problems. In July 2024, cybersecurity company CrowdStrike sent a faulty update to its security program, which crashed Microsoft Windows computers running the software. About 8.5 million systems were taken down, reportedly one of the largest outages in the history of IT. An estimated 500,000 passengers were affected and the incident cost Delta **$550 million** in lost revenue and expenses.

"We’ve been focused on safe, stable, on-time operations with bags and with a memorable experience for our customers," a Delta spokesman says. He added that Delta's most recent performance metrics, which are not part of the AQR report, have shown a significant improvement.

For frequent flyers, Delta's scores represent a seismic shift. The airline built its reputation on premium service and reliability. Now it's struggling with basics like customer service.

### Alaska, Hawaiian are consistent performers
The AQR also singled out **Alaska Airlines** as the steadiest performer in the industry. It's the only airline of the 10 domestic airlines that has consistently scored in the top 2 for all the years, finishing second in 2024.

**Hawaiian Airlines**, meanwhile, proved why it's historically dominated the on-time performance category. The carrier posted the best punctuality record in 9 of the last 10 years.

### Frontier, American are the perennial problem children
**Frontier Airlines** remains stuck at the bottom for the third straight year. The Denver-based budget carrier posted the worst on-time performance (69.5 percent), the highest denial rate (2.25 per 10,000 passengers), and the most customer complaints (25.65 per 100,000 passengers).

Frontier did not respond to a request for a comment.

"Frontier is the only airline of the 10 airlines to remain in the same rank — 10th — for all three reporting years," Irish says.

That's consistency — but not the good kind.

**American Airlines**, the worst-ranked legacy carrier, isn't far behind. It ranked ninth overall, with the industry's worst baggage handling record for three consecutive years. The airline carrier mishandled 0.84 bags per 100 checked — nearly double Southwest's rate.

### What the numbers mean for passengers
So are airlines providing better customer service? The answer is a resounding no. Excluding the pandemic, the 2024 AQR score is the second-lowest ever.

Overall performance improved in some areas — on-time arrivals rose from 73 percent in 2022 to 76.5 percent in 2024, and baggage handling got better too.

But customer complaints surged across the board, jumping from 7.39 per 100,000 passengers in 2022 to 9.19 in 2024.

Passenger volumes have returned to pre-pandemic levels — 774.8 million passengers flew in 2024, up from 752.8 million in 2023 — but airlines haven't scaled their service quality accordingly.

In other words, they can get your plane off the ground on time, but they can't answer your call or resolve your problem without generating a complaint.

"The complaints went way up, and that's highlighting ongoing negative consumer sentiment despite operational gains," Irish explains.

### AQRs methodology matters
The AQR report's credibility comes from its objective approach. Unlike other customer satisfaction surveys, the Airline Quality Rating exclusively uses government data that airlines must report monthly.

The AQR system uses a multifactor, weighted average approach to assess airline quality, drawing on publicly available data from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Over the years, the government's reporting requirements have changed, which makes historical comparisons a little tricky.

For example, in 2022, the government changed how it reports mishandled baggage from losses per passenger to losses per 100 checked bags. This gives a more accurate picture of your risk when checking a bag. To maintain comparability, the weights assigned to these criteria have been held constant.

Still, the customer service trend is unmistakable.

### The bottom line for air travelers
If you have a choice of airline — and let's be honest, you often don't — book a flight on Southwest. The carrier's service turnaround is real, and it shows in every metric that matters.

Alaska is your second-best bet, offering consistent performance across the board.

You might want to think carefully before booking a ticket on Frontier. The ultra-low-cost model clearly isn't providing customer satisfaction, even if the fares look cheap. And American's baggage problems make it risky for anyone checking bags.

As for Delta? The airline's fall from grace should worry anyone with loyalty to the brand. Until it fixes its customer service problems, that premium you're paying for a ticket isn't buying you premium treatment.

The latest Airline Quality Rating suggests the U.S. airline industry's recovery from the pandemic has been uneven. Some air carriers learned the right lessons. Others are still figuring it out.

Your wallet — and your customer service experience — will depend on knowing the difference.

The 2025 Airline Quality Rating returns with a new list of winners and losers. Here’s an exclusive look at which airlines deliver the best — and worst — customer service.

Southwest Airlines' Stunning Comeback: How They Topped the 2025 Airline Rankings While Others Plummet

## The Evolution of Customer Service

Customer service has transformed from a simple add-on to a critical component of business success. What was once a nice-to-have is now essential for staying competitive.

**Personalization** used to mean just recognizing a customer by name, but it has evolved into something much deeper. It's about combining name recognition with insights from marketing, sales, and support to make customers feel truly known.

Recent research shows that **79% of U.S. customers** value a personalized experience, and **89% of business leaders** see it as crucial for success in the next three years.

## No Longer a Trend, Personalization Is a Competitive Advantage

Companies that fail to personalize risk falling behind. It's no longer optional; it's a must-have for winning and retaining customers.

## Creating Personalized and Customized Experiences Online

**Artificial intelligence (AI)** has revolutionized how we analyze customer data, enabling real-time personalization that turns ordinary interactions into memorable, customized experiences.

- **Netflix** uses AI to analyze viewing habits, time preferences, and watch duration to recommend shows and movies, creating a highly personalized user experience.
  ![Netflix AI Personalization](https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/68c4cbef5478d7b62f73a117/AI-analyzes-what--when--and-how-you-watch-so-Netflix-can-recommend-the-perfect-show-/960x0.jpg?format=jpg&width=960)

- **Zappos** positions itself as a service company that sells shoes, offering award-winning live support and personalized recommendations for returning customers to create WOW experiences.

- Even in non-consumer sectors, like law, **DK Law** uses multiple website entry points tailored to clients' languages and cultures, building trust and better communication in a traditionally impersonal field.

- In B2B, **Salesforce** leverages AI to track how companies use its software, providing personalized dashboards, training, and suggestions to help businesses maximize their investment.

A successful strategy blends technology with human insight, gathering the right data to create deeply personalized experiences. Companies that master this balance will earn customer loyalty, as personalization has become an expected standard that keeps customers from switching to competitors.

Customer service has evolved with how we do business. What was once a nice-to-have feature has become table stakes for success. 

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