SOUTHWEST AIRLINES

Spreading the Luv:

•  Customer service as competitive
advantage
•  Southwest.com: Intuitive design,
friendly service, time savings
(online check-in, virtual queue
manager)
•  Online experience consistent with
offline
•  Refuses to separate sales
transaction from customer
service—No syndicating fares to
aggregators
•  Customer experience continues
off-site: Email itineraries, mobile
flight alerts
•  Valuable rewards: Discounted
fares, 1 free trip with purchase of
8 roundtrips
 PIONEERING CUSTOMER SERVICE
•  2005: Introduced Ding! app
•  One of the earliest apps
•  $150M, 2M downloads in first 2
years
•  Alerts to discounted fares at selected
airports (6-12 hours to buy)
•  Sonic branding: Same sound as “You
are free to move about the country”
campaign
•  Drove 10M visits to southwest.com
in Q3 2008
 SAME SHOW DIFFERENT CHANNEL
•  Using social media channels as
customer service channels
•  Friendly community managers
“chatting with Lindsey and Christi”
•  Community managers and
customers share SWA experiences
•  Content:
-  Promotions
-  Events
-  News
-  Content from other channels

•  79,000 Facebook fans and

counting
 SAME SHOW DIFFERENT CHANNEL
•  Other channels:
-  800#
-  Twitter (Live customer service
channel)
-  Flickr (Sharing customer
experiences)
-  LinkedIn (CEO’s profile is
public)
-  YouTube
-  Email
-  Mobile (Windows Mobile-Fox
Business Online partnership)
-  Ding! Desktop app
-  Television
-  Radio
 PIONEERING CUSTOMER SERVICE
•  1st airline to launch a blog (Nuts
About Southwest)
•  CEO blog
•  Managed by Blog Girl and Blog
Boy
•  Channel used for
–  Communications (i.e. response to
FAA safety violations),
–  Virtual focus group
–  Aggregates content from all
channels
 PIONEERING CUSTOMER SERVICE
•  SWABIZ: Offers same friendly, quick
and easy service to business
customers
•  No setup, online reporting, booking
transaction, change, or cancellation
fees
•  Purchase, track, and report air-travel
expenses, one-stop shopping,
traveler accounts
•  66% of Fortune 500 companies
enrolled
 SOUTHWEST AIRLINES
Result:
•  $2.62B in revenues (Q2 2009)
•  78% of flights booked, and 75%
of revenues earned, online
•  77% checked in online
•  7M subscribers to weekly Click-
N-Save emails
•  Most unique visitors of airlines
(Nielsen); 4th largest travel site
and airline site (comScore)