Blueprint for a Southwest Airlines Comeback

Prior to its December meltdown that resulted in nearly 17,000 cancelled flights and hundreds of thousands of stranded customers in the middle of the holiday season, Southwest Airlines was a card-carrying member of a select group of companies that are referred to as Customer Obsessed.??It’s fair to say that after the December debacle, for the time being, they have lost the right to be a member of that exclusive club.

Southwest’s initial response didn’t do them any favors either. They offered unrealistic timelines for rebooking flights, partial reimbursement for expenses customers incurred to salvage their travel plans and extended lead times to return lost baggage.??Many customers expected that in typical Southwest fashion, the airline would have gotten ahead of the problems and made things right for them, e.g., proactively offer refunds to customers they couldn’t rebook to get them to their holiday destinations in time.??They had loyal customers wondering “what airline is this?” and “what have you done with my beloved Southwest Airlines?”?

That’s not surprising because what customers experienced was in stark contrast to what’s typical for Southwest. For decades, Southwest was best known for going out of their way to deliver memorable moments for their customers and connecting emotionally with them.??Whenever you read about them in the press or social media, it was usually because of something phenomenal they had done for their customers or employees.

I’m reminded of the case of the mother of two who forgot her bridesmaid dress when she traveled to Costa Rica to participate in a destination wedding.??She couldn’t get any of the well-known shipping companies to deliver it in time, but Southwest answered her twitter plea and stepped up to save the day.??Another case was when a woman and her 86-year-old mother who were on their way to Las Vegas to fulfill a bucket list item for the 86-year-old.??They got sidetracked, missed their flight and thought they had lost all hope of getting to Las Vegas in time to attend the Chayanne concert they were headed to. Then a Southwest gate agent stepped up, gifted them her own buddy tickets and got them on a flight that would get them there in time.

The stories in the aftermath of the December meltdown are just the opposite of these, and unfortunately for Southwest they are going to be told repeatedly just like the favorable ones were.??There’s the couple who paid $800 a piece for one-way tickets to get back home in time for work, the MS patient who bought a one-way ticket for $600 to get home in time to get access to his meds, the family who drove from Baltimore to Fort Lauderdale to make in time for their cruise, and so on.??There’s no shortage of heart wrenching stories that will be told for years to come.?

This scenario reminds me of a book?entitled "A Setback is a Setup for a Comeback"?written by world-renowned motivational speaker, ? Dr. Willie Jolley .?The book is Dr. Jollie’s account of his own comeback from a personal demoralizing setback.?Though the nature and circumstances of Southwest’s setback are very different from his, they would do well to adopt the same mindset and then pursue their comeback with laser focused intentionality and intensity.

For Southwest to make a comeback, it's not going to be enough to just return luggage, refund the price of tickets, reimburse for replacement tickets or do all of the above plus give out 25,000 reward points for good measure.??Of course, taking care of these items must be the first order of business, but the airline needs to do more.??The way back must be paved by rebuilding trust and reconnecting emotionally through memorable moments.?

For starters, Southwest needs to pivot from the generic apologies to actual personalized ones.??They should get laser focused on exactly what memories were wrecked and be intentional about helping customers make new memories so poignant that they take a bit of the sting out of the bad ones.??They need to lean in, collect customers’ stories, make a record of specific customer memories that were wrecked and then team up with customers to help them bring to life an upcoming opportunity for an equally memorable life moment.

If an approach like this is executed well, the outcome should be that whenever customers tell about their cancellation experience, that story should be immediately followed by one that goes something like “you can’t imagine how Southwest made it up to me…”. That would go a long way to helping Southwest regain its reputation for being a Customer Obsessed company.??

It’s fair to say that Southwest’s meltdown resulted from a loss of focus on some of the signature practices that made them great.??To make a comeback, they need to recommit to ALL of the signature practices of Customer Obsession such as betting the farm on extreme customer centric policies, giving customers what they want before they know they need it, and innovating relentlessly.??More detail about these practices can be found in the book Blueprint for Customer Obsession by yours truly.

Marbue Brown is author of the new book Blueprint for Customer Obsession and founder of The Customer Obsession Advantage .?He is an accomplished customer experience (CX) executive with a track record of thought leadership and signature business results at some of the most iconic companies on the planet, including 摩根大通 ,? 亚马逊 , 微软 , and 思科 .

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