Welcome back. This is Ann-Marie Alcántara and Katie Deighton filling in for Nat Ives.

Annual job listings featuring the word "accessibility" grew 78% between August 2020 and July 2021. Customer care is morphing into "customer delight" at some companies. IDEO’s new chief marketing officer talks about the need to make the design industry more inclusive. And customers calling airlines are finding themselves on hold for hours.

Accessibility jobs are increasing at a rapid pace across industries, as companies look to make their products and services usable to people with disabilities.

The total number of job listings containing the word "accessibility" grew 78% in the year ended July from the previous 12 months, according to data from LinkedIn. About 12,000 jobs had accessibility in the title between August 2020 and July 2021, Ann-Marie Alcántara reports.

The increase in accessibility jobs comes in response to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, a growing number of disability lawsuits and more interest in diversity and inclusion efforts, advocates and hiring managers say.

Customer support platform Zendesk is hiring employees to work full-time on accessibility efforts at the company, for example, moving away from its previous part-time model.

“Our goal is to remove friction from every part of the customer journey, and accessibility is a key pillar needed to provide the best service,” said Rick Boardman, senior director of product accessibility at Zendesk.

Some companies are paying to impress customers with more than just smooth service. Welcome to the world of the customer delight department, where company associates actively look for unexpected ways to surprise clientele, Katie Deighton writes for the Experience Report.

Some e-commerce companies, such as the florist Bloom & Wild and restaurant delivery service Zomato, are handing customer delight associates the budgets and autonomy to make sure customers remain impressed with their service, even when things go wrong. As well as responding to inbound complaints and queries, customer delight employees are also tasked with finding ways to surprise consumers and deserving members of the public with something like a box of cupcakes or a fresh bouquet.

But spending money to elevate customer service to delightful service can be at odds with the growth of e-commerce businesses.

“There have been times we’ve intentionally had to scale back, knowing that the relationship with the customer comes first,” said Lara Casey Isaacson, CEO of Cultivate What Matters, a stationery company that has six customer delight employees. 

IDEO’s chief marketing officer, Detria Williamson, this week spoke to the Experience Report about making design—and IDEO’s own workforce—more inclusive.

The global design company is known for its focus on human-centered design, and has worked on projects like the first mass-market Apple mouse.

“While this is exciting because we are now seeing a greater understanding and appreciation for good design, it also has led to an oversimplification, and commoditization of design,” she said of how design has changed in the past decade.

Ms. Williamson said agencies are beginning to bring design practices in-house. “Every company is thinking about design,” she said. “And if they’re not, they should be.”

Customers looking to change their flights or adjust any upcoming travel plans are experiencing excruitating wait times when calling airlines' customer service lines, Allison Pohle and Krystal Hur report.

Companies such as JetBlue say the high call volume is due to travel demand. Delta says it's hiring and training 1,300 employees to answer customers' questions by September. Its call center staffing is down by 50% this year.

Cam’Ron Wells, a TV producer, had to change his JetBlue flight from Los Angeles to Miami. He was on hold for four hours. During that time, he watched TV, did his laundry, cooked and even took a nap.

“Customer service was great, it was just: Oh my gosh, a four-hour wait for something that’s going to take three minutes,” Mr. Wells said.

Sleeper trains in Europe are making a comeback with modern beds, electrical outlets and Wi-Fi, as people look for alternatives to flying. [WSJ]

Walgreens named Tracey Brown as its president of retail products and chief customer officer, a new role at the company. [CNBC]

Customer support platform Zendesk acquired Cleverly, an artificial intelligence startup. [TechCrunch]

Twitch streamers organized a protest against “hate raids,” a practice that creators say target marginalized users. [IGN]

Snapchat updated its Scan technology to let users scan and identify more items, such as clothing. [The Verge]

News curation service Flipboard introduced new tools to help users curate more of what they want to read on the platform. [TechCrunch]

Why design polls don’t always work well on social media. [UX Collective]

Ikea is testing a resale service in Philadelphia. [Retail Dive]