As a result of the highly competitive market today, companies seek ways to add value to its customer. Having the best “hardware” is no longer the ultimate goal, instead, better “software” are what companies pursuing nowadays. Take airline industry as an example, every airline can have the best planes, but not all airlines can offer fantastic service to customers. Let’s look how Southwest Airline add value to its customer.
Southwest Airline is not a huge airline comparing to other airlines in the United State. However, Southwest has the lowest number of complaints among all U.S. airlines, it consistently received the fewest ratio of complaints per passenger boarded of all major U.S. carriers since 1987. How is it possible for a middle size airline company achive such big success? The answer lies on the value that the company delivered to its customer.
People who travelled a lot will notice that no matter which airline you flight with in U.S., when you pay a fee to check a luggage. However, Southwest decided not to charge customer for luggage when they flight with the airline. In addition, Southwest offers free in-flight non-alcoholic beverages to customer who flight with the company. More importantly, flight attendent of Southwest have their unique way of announcing safety information by making them into songs, jokes or raps, which can entertain their customer. Lastly, Southwest offers a frequent-flyer program to benefit customer who flies a lot with the company, this program helps the company to maintain its customer loyalty.
As a conclusion, the reason why Southwest Airline was able to achive its success because they add value to its customer by offering free luggage check-in, free non-alcholic beverages, entertaining way of announcing safety information and reward program to benefit frequent flyers.