Four thousand phones.
Twelve people answering.
One obvious fix.
Weather closes an airport. Everyone reaches for their phone at the same moment, and the contact centre is the only door. This demonstrates the alternative: three rebook options prepared inside the wait, before anyone dials.
“A delay notification tells you the thing you already know and none of the things you need.”
Southerly Air · an invented exampleThe delay that lands on everyone at once
The board changes. Four thousand people simultaneously want to know whether they get home tonight, what it costs them, and whether their connection is gone. Twelve agents pick up. Everyone else waits, refreshes, and waits again — and by the time they are answered they are already angry.
Disruption is the only moment where an airline’s entire customer relationship is decided, and it is the one moment when the airline is least able to answer the phone. The information needed already exists in the operation.
What happens now
A push notification, then a queue. The wait is spent producing frustration rather than answers.
What it costs
The most expensive hour in the airline’s year, spent making the relationship worse instead of better.
What the concept does
Prepares three genuine options against tonight’s actual availability, and stops. The passenger chooses.
Every disruption moment, one pattern.
Each of these is a moment your customer already spends with you. Each can carry what the phone above shows: watch the work, earn the wait, answer one thing.
Be relevant — right thing, right moment · Be respectful — short, skippable, quiet by design · Be measurable — real impact, on the record · Be Aotearoa — built here, for how Kiwis actually wait
Every wait between booking and bags
Six moments in one trip where a passenger has nothing to do but wait. Here is what could arrive instead.
She stops guessing which day is the good day.
She reaches the desk already knowing the bag is fine and the seat is sorted.
She hears the reason before the board shows it, and has options before she has queued.
She lands with the next problem already solved instead of standing at a closed counter.
She knows whether to stand at the belt or sit down with the kids.
She stops running the numbers herself, because someone already has.
Four steps, every time.
- The signalSomething in your own systems says a person is now waiting, and roughly how long for.
- The predictionHow long this one will really take — not the average, this one.
- The valueSomething worth their attention goes into that window: an answer, a credit, a thing prepared while they wait.
- The exchangeThey get value. You get a customer who stayed, and one optional answer you have always wanted.
This is the reward layer, running for real on this page. Drag to scratch it. Nothing is collected, nothing is sent — it is here so the idea is something you do, not something you read.
US retailers lose an estimated $37.7 billion a year to customers who abandon because of long queues, split roughly $15.8b to competitors and $21.9b abandoned outright (Adyen with 451 Research). The New York State Department of Labor reported a 48% reduction in hang-ups after introducing virtual queuing. Theme parks moving to virtual queues reported a 36% lift in per-capita spending, because guests spent the wait somewhere that sold something. A Seattle-Tacoma Airport study found 63% of passengers said they shopped or ate more because they saved time in the security queue.
Every figure on this page carries its source. Overseas figures are shown as overseas figures — we have not found a published New Zealand equivalent, and we will not invent one.
One delay. Four passengers.
The same weather, four situations. Nothing is booked, rerouted or refunded by the concept — every option waits for the passenger, and the ones needing a person say so.
A template sends the same thing to everyone and changes the name. What matters here is the case that should get something different — or nothing at all.
The rules beside each draft are placeholders. A pilot replaces them with your actual policies. We have not seen those, and this concept does not guess at them.
The checks that run before an option reaches a passenger
Disruption is where automation is most tempting and most dangerous. The blocks are the point.
Drafts are held against the Civil Aviation Act 2023, the Fair Trading Act 1986, the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993, the Privacy Act 2020, and the Human Rights Act 1993.
Press run to see what it catches — and what it refuses to produce at all.
One room. Your people, your agents, every action on the record.
Every concept on this page would run inside a private room like this: your team and the agents in the same space, drafts appearing with receipts, a named person saying yes. It runs on infrastructure you approve — and what is said in the room stays in it.
receipt sources: your rate card · rules: yours · held for approval
Client information stays in your room. Six months later, “where did this come from?” is one line, not a search.
Yours
Runs where you approve — your own room, your own record. Nothing in it leaves it.
On the record
Every agent action lands as a line a person can read — not a log only a vendor can open.
People decide
Drafts wait for a named person. The room shows who said yes, and when.
This panel is a concept picture, not a live room — a pilot stands up the real one, on infrastructure you approve.
The disruption, before anything sends
Illustrative and fictional. No production access is requested by this concept.
| Passenger | Count | Prepared | Waiting on | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| International connection at risk | — | Three options, connection flagged | Passenger to choose | Awaiting choice |
| Two adults, two under five | — | Three options, ranked for sleep | Passenger to choose | Awaiting choice |
| Simple same-day rebook | — | Three options prepared | Passenger to choose | Awaiting choice |
| Medical assistance noted | — | Nothing prepared | A named person, urgently | Held — no options |
| Unaccompanied minor | — | Nothing prepared | Guardian, via a person | Held — rerouted |
| Booking held by an agency | — | Options held | Agency of record | Parked |
Counts are blank because this is a demonstrator. There is no Southerly Air, and therefore no operation.
Every draft carries its own working.
Not a log somebody has to go and find. The provenance travels with the work — what it read, which rules it held, who must approve it, and what it refused to do.
This matters most on the day someone asks why it said what it said.
- Artefact
- Rebook options — international connection at risk
- Read
- Invented schedule and availability for an invented airline · booking fields: onward connection, party composition, assistance requirement, minor flag. No payment data.
- Rules held
- Civil Aviation Act 2023 · Fair Trading Act 1986 · Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 · Privacy Act 2020 · Human Rights Act 1993
- Refused
- Nothing was booked, moved or refunded. No compensation entitlement was asserted. No options were prepared for a booking carrying an assistance requirement or for an unaccompanied minor. No option was ranked by cost to the airline.
- Approver
- A named person. Unsent until then.
- Prepared
- —
- Reference
- —
What this will never do
It does not send. It prepares, and a named person sends. It does not publish to any channel, commit spend, move money, or make a decision that belongs to a person. It does not pretend to be a person — every draft says it was prepared by a machine and approved by a human.
No production access is requested by this concept.
Scope
In a real engagement: one disruption type, one route, one month. Not the operation, not pricing, not compensation, not the reservation system.
Access
Schedule and availability feeds, and the field names that mark connections, party composition, assistance requirements and minor bookings. No payment data.
Scorecard
Passengers who chose an option instead of calling. Held cases a person agreed should have been held. Contact-centre calls avoided during the peak hour. And whether a duty manager would send the option list under their own name.
Fail any line of the scorecard and we change the design or stop.
What a pilot actually asks of you.
Written out in full, because the honest version of this is short and most of it is your time, not your money.
One named person
The approver. Every draft stops with them and nothing reaches a customer until they say so. Expect about two hours a week — reading drafts, not managing a project.
One situation, not the business
In a real engagement: one disruption type, one route, one month. Not the operation, not pricing, not compensation, not the reservation system.
Read-only access, nothing that writes
Schedule and availability feeds, and the field names that mark connections, party composition, assistance requirements and minor bookings. No payment data. No production credentials, no write permissions, no access to anything the pilot does not need.
Your actual rules
The policies, limits and words the drafts must be held against. Every rule on this page is a placeholder standing in for yours. An afternoon with whoever owns them is usually enough.
Six weeks, then a real decision
Scored on: Passengers who chose an option instead of calling. Held cases a person agreed should have been held. Contact-centre calls avoided during the peak hour. And whether a duty manager would send the option list under their own name. Fail any line of that and we change the design or stop. You keep everything drafted either way.
A fixed fee, agreed in writing first
No number is published on this page, because it depends on which situation you pick. Whatever it is, it is agreed before any work starts and it does not move.
Run the pilot.
Say yes to the six weeks above, and add anything you would change first. Nothing here is fixed — most pilots move a line or two before they start, and the notes below are how that happens.
Opens your mail app to assembl@assembl.co.nz with your notes in it. Nothing is collected by this page.
- Six weeks, one situation, scored against a written line
- Read-only access, nothing production
- A named approver — nothing sends without them
- A fixed fee, agreed in writing before anything starts
- Stop any time. You keep what was drafted
Pick a verb.
Not “book a demo”. Any of these is a real next step, and the last one is a perfectly good answer.
What is the one constraint we have got wrong?
Every concept is built from the outside. There is always something about how Southerly actually runs that we could not see. One line is enough.
Opens your mail app to assembl@assembl.co.nz. Nothing is collected by this page.