The Truly Friendly Skies: Southwest Airlines

I love Southwest Airlines. In a time when nearly every other airline is bankrupting themselves, exacerbating their problems with underhanded pricing, starving their customers, and providing Soviet-era customer service, Southwest is expanding their offerings in their typical friendly, easygoing way.

If you’ve never flown Southwest, try it sometime. It takes a bit of getting used to, what with the un-assigned seating, friendly, sometimes comedic employees and general low-key atmosphere, but I think you’ll find it a welcome relief from the cut-rate, commodity service most airlines today provide.

While in the midst of a recent multi-city trip, some personal events came up required me to change travel plans at the last minute. I needed to cancel the Southwest leg of my trip, and buy a ticket on a different airline (Southwest doesn’t service the city I needed to reach). Concerned I would lose my ticket, I called Southwest, planning on a long, difficult phone call that would likely end in disappointment. After all, that’s what years of dealing with other airlines has conditioned me for.

Instead, on the third or fourth ring, I reached an actual human being, one who spoke clearly and professionally, and one who was extremely sympathetic to my predicament. Not that it mattered – Southwest has an anytime cancellation process. They simply release your ticket so someone else can use it, and you are free to use the money towards any trip in the next year. No fees, no arguing, no special exceptions. Everyone gets this treatment.

Today, I decided to cash in my ticket for another trip (to see the Iowa Hawkeyes play Penn State in Iowa City with my dad). I looked up tickets, found what I was looking for easily (their web site has exhibits exceptional usability), and started the checkout process. I applied the funds from my cancelled trip by entering the old confirmation code in a highly-visible form field, and the price was reduced then and there. No customer service call required. Another airline would probably have wanted a phone call at the least, and might have required an in-person chat at the airport.

After the voucher was applied, there was still a balance remaining, and I reached for my wallet, prepared to get my credit card out. No need! Southwest takes PayPal! I simply entered my e-mail address and PayPal password, and I was done! A confirmation e-mail appeared in my inbox before you could say “tabbed browsing.” I have never seen another airline offer this payment option,* and I applaud Southwest for adopting it – PayPal is designed for online payments, unlike Visa or Mastercard (whose cards seem to get stolen with appalling frequency).

So kudos to you, Southwest. You understand that today’s influential brands are more than a logo and a catchy jingle. Today’s best brands focus on top-notch usability, excellent customer service, and focus on the customer’s needs. Done right, you get people like me blogging about you. Done wrong, you have your customers price-shopping on ticket auction sites (Kayak.com is my new favorite).

* I do have one question: what does the TSA think about PayPal? I know paying cash for a plane ticket is a red flag … I wonder what they think of digital cash?