5 Thought-Provoking CX Secrets from American Airlines' Chief Customer Officer

For most of us, air travel is a familiar routine — a mix of anticipation, logistics and, let’s be honest, plenty of stress.

Customer expectations are sky-high and the margin for error is razor-thin. In this ultra-competitive environment, leading brands aren't just tweaking the process; they're completely rethinking the entire customer journey.

But how does one of the world's largest airlines, serving over 600,000 customers every single day, pivot to meet this new reality?

We caught up with Heather Garboden, the chief customer officer at American Airlines, at CXUnifiers, Nashville, TN, recently. She shared how the airline is navigating a massive CX transformation, moving from a purely operational focus to a deeply human-centric one. This shift is powered by a new philosophy of social listening and the technological capability to execute it on a global scale.

Here are five surprising takeaways from that conversation.

1. When smooth landings aren’t enough anymore

For decades, the airline industry defined success by three simple metrics: price, schedule and operational reliability. The core promise was straightforward: get passengers to their destination on time, with their luggage. While that remains a top priority, the definition of a great experience has fundamentally shifted.

According to Garboden, running a reliable operation is now simply "table stakes." The new focus is on elevating the entire cohesive journey — from the moment a customer thinks about booking a trip to the second they leave the destination airport. It's about ensuring every touchpoint, whether digital or in-person, feels seamless and considered. This change reframes the mission from a simple logistical task to a holistic experience management challenge, requiring a completely new level of customer understanding.

"It doesn't matter if you have the nicest lounge or the best app, if we can't get you there on time and with your bags, then none of that matters. But running a reliable operation is table stakes at this point," Garboden said.

2. From cabin chatter to customer insight

To meet this new, elevated goal, an airline has to truly understand its customers. For American Airlines, the scale of that challenge is staggering. The airline operates 6,000 flights and serves over 600,000 customers every single day, generating a monumental, unceasing wave of feedback, questions and real-time commentary.

Managing this deluge of information is impossible without a powerful platform to unify and make sense of it all. Garboden explained that American Airlines uses Sprinklr to consolidate and understand feedback from 400 million different sources. To be clear, this isn't just listening to a few social channels. This is about unifying a digital universe of conversations, reviews and signals into a single, coherent view of the customer — a task of staggering complexity. But simply ingesting this data isn't the goal; it's what this unprecedented listening capability unlocks — like a surprisingly human approach to AI.

3. When AI becomes the co-pilot for empathy

When business leaders talk about AI, the conversation often centers on automation and cost-cutting. American Airlines is taking a different, more counter-intuitive approach. The goal, as Garboden puts it, is to "use technology, AI to better serve our customers and have a more human touch."

She provided two powerful examples of this philosophy in action:

1. Proactive service recovery: Instead of waiting for a frustrated customer to complain, American Airlines uses data to identify passengers who have experienced a string of bad luck, like multiple recent delays. The airline can now reach out proactively to apologize and make things right. This shifts the service model from a transactional relationship (you complain, we fix) to a relational one (we see you're having a tough time, we want to help).

2. Employee empowerment: A great customer experience is built on a great team member experience. American uses real-time social listening to catch positive feedback — like a passenger on X praising a helpful gate agent — and share it instantly with the team. This creates a powerful, real-time feedback loop: great service generates public praise, which is used for immediate recognition, which in turn motivates team members to deliver more great service.

4. Navigating CX with precision and perspective

For American Airlines, customer feedback serves a dual role: it provides granular data for immediate, individual case resolution and aggregated trends for long-term, systemic trend analysis.

The microscope (tactical): Real-time feedback enables American to solve individual problems on the day of travel. Garboden cited concrete examples, like being able to respond quickly when a passenger's bag is stuck in Columbus or when someone finds expired pretzels on a plane. This is about using listening to fix specific issues and improve a single person’s journey, right now.

The telescope (strategic): Aggregated over time, this same feedback informs broad business decisions. The recent redesign of the American Airlines mobile app is a perfect case study. First, strategic listening confirmed that "customers wanted easier navigation," which informed the initial decision to redesign. Then, after the new version launched, feedback showed that users were unhappy with the new placement of the flight status feature. Armed with this clear sentiment data, the team rolled the change back, demonstrating a commitment to letting customer feedback guide product strategy at every stage.

Related Read: 10 Best Social Listening Tools in 2025 (Features & Pricing)

5. Tomorrow’s journeys will know you before you board

The ultimate payoff for mastering listening at scale and applying AI with a human touch is the ability to shift from a reactive business model to a proactive, and even predictive, one. This is the culmination of the entire strategy: using deep customer understanding to anticipate needs before they are even expressed.

Garboden painted a vivid picture of this future: imagine the airline knowing that a specific traveler flies to Nashville quarterly, always orders the short ribs on board and enjoys the airport lounges. With that understanding, American could proactively suggest flights for their next trip and personalize the entire journey, removing friction and adding value at every step.

An early glimpse of this future is the new "Destination Recommender" tool on the airline's website. Powered by GenAI, it allows customers to use natural language to search for trips, asking questions like, "where can I find the best golf courses in the fall?" It’s a first step toward the future of predictive engagement, where the experience doesn’t just respond to commands but anticipates desires.

From passenger to partner

The transformation happening at American Airlines isn't just about deploying new technology. It's about a fundamental shift in philosophy — from viewing travelers as passengers to be transported, to seeing them as partners whose feedback is essential for building a better journey. As technology gives brands an unprecedented ability to listen, it’ll be interesting to watch how the best companies, in the coming years, will use that power to anticipate and serve human needs.

The entire conversation with Heather Garboden is available on-demand and can be viewed on this page.