Why Successful Support for Business Travelers Requires Both AI and Humans

Consider this: 25% of all flights in the U.S. have been severely delayed in 2025, creating substantial disruptions for business travelers.

That’s just one of the statistics shared in a recent Navan webinar, The Unique Technologies Behind Navan’s Superior Travel Support, hosted by Dane Molter, SVP of Navan Travel, and Shauntel Lizzarazo, Navan’s senior director of client experience.

And it’s one reason Navan is hyper-focused on optimizing the traveler support experience.

The Navan Support Ideology

Navan believes in human-first support, backed by powerful technology. It’s why the job requirements to be a Navan agent include 3–5 years of experience, with expertise across GDS, NDC, and 25+ travel platforms.

Still, as the webinar hosts point out, business travelers tend to make more changes than consumer travelers, and often need those changes more immediately. Providing assistance at scale means either hiring an army of agents or using AI to act as the agents’ first line of defense.

What percentage of traveler support calls does Navan’s AI support agent resolve? Find out: Watch the webinar.

The Navan Combo

Navan’s human agents are helped by Ava, Navan’s agentic AI support agent. Not to be confused with a bot (there are no pre-built workflows), Ava is a conversation layer that sits on top of Navan’s AI technology, Navan Cognition.

Ava uses auto-categorization and routing to resolve common issues such as rebookings without human agent support. But Ava’s not just a traveler-facing feature: When it can’t resolve an issue, Ava routes the call to the most suitable agent with the trip’s context attached. This step eliminates repetitive information gathering and reduces handling time. Agents are also aided by TravelXen — software Navan built in-house — which serves up a complete view of the traveler’s record and helps speed a solution.

America’s aviation infrastructure has been one of the issues behind the many flight disruptions this year — a situation likely to continue, even as the needs of travelers become significantly more complicated. Having powerful technology and the best humans working together, as they do at Navan, has never been more essential.

Learn more about how Navan is driving results when our travelers need help the most: Check out the webinar.