CASE STUDY

Copyright ©2012, Carousel Industries® www.carouselindustries.comJETCS-0112

Product List

IP Telephony• Avaya S8300/8730

Media Servers

• Avaya G250/450/650 Media Gateways

• Avaya Modular Messaging Center

• Avaya CMS

• Avaya Enterprise Survivable Server

At A Glance

JetBlue Airways• Major American airline

• Serving 58 U.S. cities

• 650 daily flights, 20 million flyers annually

• Headquarters in Forest Hills, NY

• Founded 1999

Challenge• Consolidate 1-800-JET-BLUE customer support system

• Upgrades necessary at 55 airport terminals, 2 central call centers

• Fast company growth exceeded scalability of current solutions

• Growing flight traffic demanded minimum system downtime

Solution• Implemented Enterprise VOIP solutions at all airport terminals

• Consolidated complete national phone network to seven digit dialing

• Upgraded existing telephony switches nationwide

• Extended redundancy and disaster recovery capabilities

Success• Increased customer service capacity for 1-800-JET-BLUE operations

• Upgraded call network, improved reliability and scalability

• Strong satisfaction of customer and users

• On time completion with full customer requirements met successfully

Challenge

Founded in 1999, JetBlue has since grown by leaps and bounds to become a recognized industry leader in affordable American air travel. Emphasizing customer service and a quality in-flight experience as their primary advantages in a highly competitive industry, JetBlue has focused much of their attention on refining and expanding the capacities of 1-800-JETBLUE, their central customer service hotline.

By 2009, JetBlue had grown to a nationwide flight network of 55 airport terminals - including their flagship terminal at the high traffic JFK Terminal 5 (T5) - and two central 1-800-JETBLUE call centers located in Forest Hills, New York and Salt Lake City, Utah. These terminals all featured independent phone systems, which caused scalability troubles as JetBlue’s success and rapid expansion led to an increasingly more complex, expensive and unreliable telecommunications network. In addition, JetBlue requires additional redundancy and disaster recovery capabilities that their current phone architecture couldn’t accommodate.

In order to continue providing a competitive quality of customer care, JetBlue’s nationwide phone network needed to be simplified, integrated and expanded into a single comprehensive dialing solution.

The particular complexities of the fast-moving airline business would add special challenges to the project. Tightened airport security meant that Carousel technicians would have to be accompanied by airport security personnel, and that work would have to be carefully choreographed to ensure full compliance with airport security arrangements. Meanwhile, nonstop flight scheduling meant that most of the work would have to be done late at night, after an airport’s last JetBlue flight had landed or taken off. Each component would have to be carefully tested and retested. And, since there really is never a good time to turn off the phone system at a busy airport terminal, great care would have to be taken to ensure little or no downtime during the implementation process.

As the implementation partner in this project, the Carousel Industries team would engage in a carefully coordinated work plan with both JetBlue and Verizon Business to finish the new phone system on time and on budget. In order to swiftly and reliably complete installation tasks at terminals located in 22 different states, a nationwide team of local installers would have to be recruited and managed.

Finally, phone networks at JetBlue’s two major customer support centers - including their headquarters in Forest Hills, New York - would have to be upgraded and connected onto the new network, also with absolute minimum downtime.

Coordinating a fleet of over 160 aircraft to make 650 flights every day of the year, JetBlue Airways today is one of America’s leading low cost domestic airlines. In recent years, JetBlue’s rapid growth as an affordable, lean-operating provider of air travel had increasingly taxed the telecommunications infrastructure that connects their 58 airport terminals to the central customer support centers that fliers reach when they call 1-800-JETBLUE.

In partnership with Verizon Business, Carousel Industries was contacted in 2009 to assist in the implementation of a new enterprise Voice-Over-IP (VoIP) network at JetBlue. Upgrading from a loose assemblage of independent phone systems sprawled across the nation; the new system would incorporate modern Avaya switching and connect all JetBlue assets into a single digital phone network. This new network would place nationwide flier reservation management, automated flight updates, crew services and support, ticket counters and customer service on a single seven-digit dialing platform, seamlessly integrated with JetBlue’s central call centers and Forest Hills, NY headquarters.

JetBlue Leverages Enterprise VoIP To Tackle Rapid Business Growth

CASE STUDY

Solution

When Carousel Industries was contracted by Verizon Business to implement the JetBlue project in August 2009, Verizon planning engineers had already determined that the best solution on hand would be an Avaya enterprise VOIP architecture - one that could tie together JetBlue’s many airport terminals and two primary call centers into a single standardized, scalable digital phone network. In Avaya terminology, this type of plan is called an FCE (Flatten, Consolidate, Extend) implementation, designed to integrate disparate phone systems into a single flat architecture - in effect, creating a decentralized virtual contact center that can be extended globally.

Several problems were still to be solved. Certain airport sites would have to be consolidated. Some sites were more remote than others and would require special efforts to deliver technology and technical staff. Existing network data would have to be ported onto new network. Most of all, this work would have to happen seamlessly and invisibly, without disrupting JetBlue flight or customer service operations.

The first step in the process was to upgrade and install replacements to JetBlue’s Avaya Definity G3R PBXs at their main Verizon data center in Beltsville, MD and the backup center in San Jose, CA. Dividing the terminals into three installation tiers, designs would include Avaya S8300 and S8370 Media Servers coupled with Avaya G250, G450 and G650 Media Gateways. The hardware replacements would offer redundant power supply and redundant CLANs for reliable call control. These systems would serve as crucial telecommunications hubs to the new JetBlue phone network.

The initial plan called for Carousel engineers and installation subcontractors to visit each airport terminal site once, to simply perform the necessary upgrades and then port existing data to the new network. Early in the project, JetBlue opted instead for a multi-visit approach, requiring technical staff to visit each site at least twice to carefully test the network, returning later to perform the data integration. Working hand in hand with JetBlue and Verizon Business, the Carousel engineers revised the implementation schedule to accommodate JetBlue’s needs.

At each airport terminal, Avaya Media Servers and Media Gateways were installed to create an enterprise VOIP network, connected to the main call management systems in Beltsville and San Jose. JetBlue’s central call centers in Forest Hills and Salt Lake City were similarly upgraded to S8730/S650 configurations. Ultimately the entire network was integrated into a single seven-digit dialing architecture with high availability at all points in JetBlue’s operational structure.

Working hand in hand with JetBlue and Verizon Business, the Carousel engineers revised the implementation schedule to accommodate JetBlue’s needs.

Carousel Industries, Inc.659 South County Trail

Exeter, RI 02822

800.401.0760 www.carouselindustries.com

Success

Large scale telephony upgrade projects require complex planning, implementation team fl exibility and carefully precise coordination - in few businesses more so than in modern commercial air travel. Even a small system failure can very quickly become a major problem. Potential downtime has to be minimized in the extreme, in order to maintain fl ight schedules and ensure quality customer service. Modern airport security further adds another layer of complexity to installation and testing schedules.

Prior to embarking on this project, JetBlue’s nationwide telecommunications infrastructure was effectively limiting their ability to grow their service coverage. With the fi nal stages of their new Avaya enterprise VOIP network, completed in March 2011, their new integrated phone system allows for signifi cantly greater scalability as well as provides for new opportunities to provide excellent customer service - the central competitive advantage that has made JetBlue a success.

This new network introduced countless effi ciencies to JetBlue operations. The ability to address maintenance issues at a single point - rather than 55 separate ones - now means lower total costs of ownership and greater service reliability. Centralization of primary telecommunications assets makes it easier for JetBlue to maintain operational organization. Finally, their signifi cantly more effi cient call centers have enhanced their ability to provide excellent customer service and to accommodate future growth.

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