I LOVE Southwest!

So here is a tip… don’t try booking airline tickets while sending an email and talking on the phone – you just might end up flying backwards - because that’s exactly what happened to me last week.

We have some fabulous friends who are getting married and I needed to get us tickets to be there for their big event. So I booked the flights and sent our ticketing information to our friends so they would know when we would arrive. Just as I was feeling rather content and ready to mark one task off my extensive list of “to dos”, I get a phone call telling me that instead of flying from San Diego to Sacramento, we will be flying from Sacramento to San Diego… oops! In my haste, I managed to book the tickets backwards.

I was sitting there saying to myself, “this is JUST GREAT!” now I have two tickets that are useless and I’m going to have to call customer service, explain the situation and pay a change fee that will probably cost more than the original flight – that has been my experience in the past with airlines like American, Delta, Alaska, etc. whenever you need to make a change. But this was Southwest and even though I had that “wanna get away” feeling about the situation, I decided to check out their website to find out about their change policy before I called. Let me just say that Southwest is AWESOME!

Not only is their website very user friendly, you can go in and edit your reservation – without a change fee – and issue yourself new tickets in less than five minutes. I did not have to hassle with calling customer service, getting placed on hold or shelling out more money. That’s not only an efficient business process for the airline but it is also great for customer service because the process was easy and efficient for me too. Best of all it was a win-win situation and keeps money in the customer’s pocket as well as in Southwest’s pocket. This is a perfect example of how to reduce costs for your business and increase customer satisfaction – build a website that functions well, is easy to navigate, and allows the customer control while saving money. Airlines and other businesses can greatly benefit from Southwest’s example.

So yeah Southwest – I wanna get away! And thanks for making it so easy!