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EP 005
28 Min
Vio.com answers urgent travel cases in as little as one to two minutes. But Maisa Breve, who leads customer experience there, says that when a booking falls apart at midnight, what saves the customer is human judgment, not speed.
Travel is one of the most unforgiving support environments there is. When someone's flight lands in three hours and their hotel reservation is missing, there is no "we'll get back to you tomorrow." Maisa Breve leads customer experience and quality at Vio.com, a travel booking platform serving over 100 million visitors a year, after nearly five years at Royal Caribbean. On this episode of the Fini Podcast, she explained how to deliver empathy through a chat window, where AI earns its place, and why the hardest cases still need a person.
Meet Maisa Breve
Maisa spent nearly five years in guest services and operations at Royal Caribbean International before moving into digital customer experience. At Vio.com she has risen from front office manager to leading customer experience and quality. Her foundation is hospitality, including a background in culinary arts, which shapes a service-first instinct she now has to translate into a chat window and a phone line.
Empathy without body language
Maisa's central challenge is delivering white-glove service without the tools hospitality relies on. In person, you can show a customer you care; online, you have to rebuild trust without body language, tone of voice, or physical presence. That takes greater clarity and what she calls intentional empathy, carried through written words or a phone call. Her team invests heavily in training so agents can convey warmth and credibility in text, and she is honest that some of it has to be innate: if the instinct for people is not already there, training only goes so far. To hit a 10-minute response time (and a one-to-two-minute SLA on critical "I'm at the hotel and there's no room" cases) without losing that empathy, the team leans on staffing, training, and customizable templates that free agents to personalize rather than start from scratch.
Where AI helps, and where she holds it back
AI already adds real value at Vio.com on the first line: a chatbot collects the booking number and the issue, filters urgency, and answers common questions, while suggesting empathetic, personalized phrasing to agents on the harder cases. Where Maisa holds back is anything that needs judgment. AI performs well inside defined rules and standard scenarios, but travel constantly throws cases the team has never seen, which demand flexibility, exceptions, and creativity. She estimates AI could take around 80% of volume, but a meaningful slice will still need a human. Importantly, customers can always choose a person, and the bot hands off the moment someone keeps asking for an agent, so a human delivers the first real response on urgent cases. The thing she most wishes AI could handle but cannot yet: out-of-policy refunds.
Travel is unforgiving: managing the team
The hardest part of building a travel support team, Maisa says, is that mistakes are immediately visible and emotionally charged. A lost booking can wreck plans, money, and a trip someone saved years for, so the job is maintaining consistent quality under pressure, making fast and accurate decisions 24/7, and supporting agents emotionally through it. Her team is fully international, and her advice for that is to stay open-minded, because each culture communicates differently and none of it is personal. She tells the story of a guest from Jordan on a cruise who was upset for days despite her best efforts, until persistent, patient communication broke through and they became friends. To keep agents resourceful, she gives them room to make (minimized) mistakes, backs them with team leads in every time zone, and turns mistakes into coaching for the whole team rather than blame. A clean escalation path and a culture of ownership hold it together.
The metrics that matter
Maisa tracks CSAT first, because it tells her how customers feel about the service and surfaces feedback she can act on. She pairs it with average handle time, distinguishing the time to address the immediate need from the time to fully close the case, since leaving customers hanging drags CSAT down. She also watches public reviews closely, holding a steady 4.3 on Trustpilot, which reflects the whole company, not just support. To keep agents accurate as policies and hotel rules change, a dedicated person updates the knowledge base and the team gets dedicated "catch up" time before each shift to read updates rather than going straight online.
What support leaders should take from this
Engineer empathy into text. Without body language, clarity and intentional warmth are skills you train for, and partly hire for.
Protect speed on the cases that hurt most. Use tighter SLAs for critical situations and softer ones elsewhere, so urgent customers never wait.
Let AI triage, keep humans on judgment. A bot collecting details and filtering urgency is great; out-of-policy and never-seen cases need a person.
Treat international as a skill, not a hurdle. Assume cultural differences, not personal attacks, and let agents learn the customer's style.
Make mistakes coachable. Give agents room to be resourceful with team-lead support, then turn errors into lessons for everyone.
Give agents time to absorb changes. A daily catch-up window keeps a fast-changing knowledge base from breaking quality.
Listen to the full episode
Maisa shares more on building trust online, managing a 24/7 international team, and where she thinks travel support is heading, in the full episode of the Fini Podcast. You can follow her work on LinkedIn.
AI that triages fast and hands off cleanly to a human when judgment is required is what Fini is built for. Book a demo to see it in action.
Can AI replace human judgment in travel customer support?
Maisa Breve does not think so. AI performs well within defined rules and standard scenarios, but travel constantly produces never-seen cases that need flexibility, exceptions, and creativity. She estimates AI could handle around 80% of volume, while a meaningful slice still requires human judgment, especially out-of-policy decisions.
How do you deliver empathy in digital customer support?
Without body language, tone of voice, or physical presence, you rebuild trust through clarity and intentional empathy in writing or on a call. Maisa's team invests heavily in training so agents convey warmth and credibility in text, and uses customizable templates so they can personalize rather than start from scratch.
How does Vio.com hit a 10-minute response time?
Through heavy staffing, training, and well-designed templates, plus tighter SLAs for critical cases. "I'm at the hotel and there's no room" situations get a one-to-two-minute target, while softer SLAs cover less urgent issues, so the most painful cases are answered immediately.
Which support metrics does Maisa Breve prioritize?
CSAT to understand how customers feel, average handle time split between addressing the immediate need and fully closing the case, and public reviews, where Vio.com holds a steady 4.3 on Trustpilot.
