Southwest gets Customer Service !!!

I was in Seattle SEA-TAC airport last friday trying to get back home. It was a mess there because the airport was locked down due to some security issue.

The whole terminal was full of people and nobody knew what was going on. There were long & long lines to get to the gates and nobody knew which lines were for which gates.

Well, in the middle of all this I could see some Southwest Airlines agents walking around and calming the passengers “There is a security issue, we are holding all our planes till everyone is on board. I know we-Southwest is doing it, but no idea what the other carriers are doing, hopefully they will do the same”.

Now, that’s what I call true customer service. Kudos, Southwest and the Seattle team !!!!

To all the other ‘big’ carriers : You can reduce your distribution costs, promote your own channels, cry to the government for bail-outs, increase price citing higher oil prices and do whatever; But please remember to take care of your customer first, & only then you can be profitable.

Now, I know which airlines to book the next time I am flying.

Searching around, I did find a blog to the difference in culture/people of Southwest. Good one Agile.

The cab driver in Seattle was saying Southwest wants to move out of SEA-TAC into the Boeing airfield. Looks like there is some arguments going on back and forth. I am for it especially if it is for the customer.


Comments

  1. Anonymous said June 27, 2005, 6:08 pm:

    Good one Sibu. As you correctly pointed out improving customer service is a must-do for the major airlines. However, i think they need to rethink their entire strategy given that the hub-and-spoke business model has become obsolete. Southwest’s Herb Kelleher has been a visionary in that sense as well because he figured out 20 years ago that point-to-point no-frills was the way to go. Many strategy experts attribute that to his brilliant idea to benchmark his airline against the people that drive an automobile to travel the distance. So essentially Southwest had to keep their costs so low to be an effective competitor to the automobile and history has proven him right many times over.