“We have the best customer satisfaction record, based on Transportation Dept. statistics, of any airline in America, the fewest complaints filed per 100,000 passengers carried,” says Kelleher. “So you’re not just getting low fares, you’re also getting wonderful customer service.”
Today, people do not just fly Southwest because they know they are getting a good deal. They fly Southwest because they know they will be looked after. Southwest’s customer service is celebrated by everyone from Tom Peters to the Harvard Business School. And all of that is thanks to an early decision made by Kelleher to make it a priority throughout his company.
“When deregulation took place, our fabulous Austin advertising agency, GSD&M…said to me: ‘Herb, now we have deregulation. Anybody can fly anyplace they want to. They can charge anything the want to. What’s special about Southwest Airlines?’” Kelleher replied, “Our people…anybody can buy the tangibles, but nobody can replicate the intangibles very easily. And I'm talking about the joie de vivre - the spirit of our people.”
It was a big risk to take for Kelleher. With Southwest’s newest advertising campaign, he decided to focus on customer service, promising that his people were the best. He told his prospective customers that their service would be warm, hospitable, and always available. “If you’re wrong, you slit your own throat,” he said. But, Kelleher was not wrong. “We’ve gotten one complaint in five years that said Southwest Airlines employees aren’t that way.”
Southwest was one of the first airlines to implement Senior Fares, as well as same-day air freight delivery service and ticketless travel. It was also one of the first to create a web page, allowing customers the first-ever such site to deliver live updates on special fares.
In one of Kelleher’s proudest examples of employee devotion, he recites the story of a Southwest employee in Dallas: “A guy calls our Dallas reservation center from St. Louis, and he tells the reservation agent that TWA has canceled its flight out of DFW to St. Louis on which his 85-year-old mother was supposed to fly, and that he's very concerned about her coming over to Love Field after having to make an intermediate connection in Tulsa. So the reservation agent says: I'm going to be off in five minutes. I'll pick her up at DFW, drive her to Love Field, and fly with her to St. Louis to make sure that she gets there ok.”
At Southwest, those kinds of stories are the norm rather than the exception. There is the man who had a heart attack at the airport, who was then accompanied by a Southwest employee to the hospital. The employee stayed with the man all night and called his wife to update her on his status. Then, there is the passenger who left the airport only to find a flat tire on his car. Moments later, a Southwest employee was changing it for him, despite the fact that the man informed him he had never flown with Southwest.
“We have a People Dept. That’s what it deals with, so don’t call it Human Resources – that sounds like something from a Stalin five-year plan. You know, how much coal you can mine,” jokes Kelleher. “We say everybody is a leader, no matter what your job is. We want you to focus on customer service - and not just to the outside world - customer service to the inside world. If [employees] pollute our other people internally and they in turn savage the people who are doing the work outside, the whole company has just rotted.”
Lesson #2: Customer Satisfaction is Your Secret Weapon
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