Southwest Airlines' Transformative Customer Experience Differentiation: Insights from Bill Tierney VP of Customer & Digital Experience

teams anywhere. iQor's BPO solutions create happy employees delighting customers to produce the CX experience brands demand to win and keep customers. Learn more about iQor at iQor.com. My guest today is an unbelievable exciting person to be talking to in these ever changing technology powered human centered times. And that is Bill Tierney. He is the vice president Customer Experience and Digital Experience for

Southwest Airlines. One of the brands I absolutely adore and love and had the good fortune of working with early in my career with a great Colleen Barrett who recently passed in May and our condolences to the Southwest family for that. Bill, I doubt. Well, first off, I should ask you about how you live in a household with five girls and one wife. But I'll pass on that and we'll get right to the really hard questions. Which is how did I get when you were in like third grade and the teacher

said, What do you want to be when you grow? Up? You said I want to be the vice president of Customer Experience and digital experience for Southwest Airlines. I'm hunching, that was not your answer. So I'd love to hear how you came to where you are today.

been revealed to me through my career here. I've just always had a desire for taking care of people I was I was a busboy when I was young, worked in the restaurant industry love that. And I've always been impressed I think anywhere I go any business I interact with, for how well people take care of their customers. And so I started here in the Customer Relations Department actually responding to letters and inquiries from our customers, oftentimes spending time on the phone and

then just listening and learning. And from there, I went to revenue management and which is if you're familiar, those are the folks who set the prices. So you know, you may pay $200 for a ticket and the person next to you pays 350 That's what the job was in that and learned a lot about the core business, and then spent well over a decade almost 15 years in the marketing department in various roles with respect to the brand advertising

go to market analytics. And then about 15 months ago, Kenny came over to the Customer Experience department and some was full circle coming home and I feel at home to be able to influence and work with everyone across the enterprise to really deliver on what I think we're known for, which is service, so it feels good.

structure works differently for different people. I'm just curious how that sets you up then to move into what I think is, in my opinion, a very innovative customer centric company that's had its stumbles in the last few years and has had to reclaim its its premiere place in that that space. I'd love to kind of understand that transition and how that helped you deal maybe with a stumble and an otherwise darling brand.

we took care of customers, the culture of the company. And then and so that's where I'd say I learned it's kind of the ethos of what Southwest Airlines was about. I was dipped in that in customer relations. And then in revenue management. I learned the core business of how we make money and the importance of optimizing sort of revenue for the company while living up to our low fare. brand promise, which is what we've been known

for. And then marketing was sort of a culmination of both, I think the brand promise the delivery of all that in the space that I worked in, we handle the sale fares and pricing, working closely with our revenue management team for that. And so you got exposed to at least a broad part of the commercial business. And then and then in this role I get exposed to the other half of that the operational side of the

business. So my job my Monday looks like this. I go to the Chief Commercial officers meeting than the Chief Chief Operations officers meeting and so you get a broader view of everything the customer intersects with all along the journey. And I think that is what is really fruitful from the time you're inspiring them to book and travel for the time they go and book and travel on your website to the day of travel, all their journey into the airport and the cabin. And

when things go well and when they don't go well. And you see that you get to see that big picture and you get a sense also through the data, information of what matters most and what needs to be addressed most. So it's kind of you

sits on top of really, but those two lived it out. And so I think they set that expectation, and then that goes out to your employee base, and the values you have for how you take care of your employees and not signs on a wall. But stories, hundreds 1000s of stories of servant leadership that started with those two and many other leaders after that, and people all across the board. It really starts internally in your culture, and then that expectation then flows outward,

I think to your customers, but it's very consistent. And I would see that in customer relations when something would come up and you know, we might have a policy, but we'd also bring understanding to that based on the individual situation of the customer. And just like we've been treated well I think by our leadership here we pass that on to the customer. So that's what I mean by the ethos.

explain benefits, right? So there was both a, a welcoming, warm, nurturing environment, but there's also a lot of fun in a precision command and control type of workplace and I find that to be so fascinating. I mean, this is it has to be the hardest industry and I know every industry thinks it's the

most difficult industry to operate in. But the last place I would want to be a chief experience officer or vice president Customer Experience would be in an airline so helped me understand how you execute successful experiences when so many variables including weather, are outside of your control.

thirst for it. I think the airline industry is brutal, and you kind of have to love the challenge of it every day, because the best plan is the ability to adapt a plan, I'd say and so the Customer Experience, sort of how I look at it is it takes place every minute on a daily basis. And you've got to have a great infrastructure to react to that. And we do and I

credit our operations team for that. And then long term you have to pay attention to what the customers are telling you on a regular basis and make sure you're addressing systemic opportunities in the business. And again, I've used that from booking to baggage claim. Primarily, those are the guardrails within that but the time they come to their store, to the time they depart the airport, what are the biggest friction points that they have? Nobody thinks of this industry

historically, as easy or fun, or simple or hospitable. And I think that's where from the time we started, thanks to our founders, we carved out a complete niche. And you can take that from the policies that we have. We want your business we want you on board, we want you happy we're grateful to be part of your journey. And so we craft these policies mean we're the only carrier that has two bags fly free no change fee points. That don't expire, a loyalty program with no blackouts.

Because we want that for you. We actually take pride in offering a great product that way, and that flows all the way through the experience. We want our policies to be reasonable. We want the experience to be as simple as possible, calming as possible, easy, flexible, and so you're looking to achieve that in every part of the business and to your point that's difficult when things are constantly changing, but it's

also when it's most important. People we're a means to an end people want to get to a destination and they want to do it as enjoyable as possible. So

innovation and technology. If anything, the stumble that you guys experienced seemed to be tech related, not having the infrastructure of some of the technology that you needed to handle these incredible peak flows that you had. I mean, I'm certainly not an insider to the industry, but I'd love to get his sense really kind of quickly without belaboring that time because I think you're a long way from that, though perceptions linger, right? customer perceptions are hard to

shift. But but maybe you can tell me a little bit about what you invested in from a technology stack or a solution stack that helps people resolve some of the challenges that you faced?

making things easier for the day. of travel and disruptions and back to sort of what people are looking for. I think when things go wrong, they're looking for good communication information. They're looking for control. They're looking for features that put them in their control and mostly they want to get read books if you kind of put things in the category information control and take care of me. And so in the last year when we looked at well, what do we need to do that falls

into different categories? Do we have the right policies in place to give people the flexibility and control they want? Do we have the technology and features in place? Are we communicating

and getting them the information they need? So we did a variety of different things last year, just with respect to a customer who experiences a disruption with respect to a flight or say we made it easier for them to make changes on their own allow them to make more than one change, change both bounds of their travel change to a co terminal make the whole process more more flexible and easier for them. We invested in things like bag tracking, as you know we have two bags fly free.

Nobody takes care of people's bags better than we do. And so they can digitally pre check your bag. They can track it through the journey. If in a rare circumstance, something happens where it gets lost or damaged. They can file a claim digitally. So it gives them more visibility to what's going on in

the day of travel. We changed our loyalty program. We got feedback from our customers, you know post COVID It's just a different environment made it easier to get to your status made in made it easier to get a less status and and I both alias tier status, qualifying points on credit cards we looked at a lot of different things that just made the travel easier both in a regular experience or in those instances where there's a disruption. And that was the focus last year and I'm proud of

what what we came out with. I think the most and

flights that that could be a change for Southwest. I also am hearing more about reclining seats and trying to take away both the mechanical extra weight of that and the little benefit that people get from reclining seats relative to the conflicts that come about as a result of it. How do you make decisions in that I'm not asking you to commit or tell us any, you know,

future secret plans. But how do you make decisions about when is it appropriate to change something like reclining seats or change in onboarding process?

yours. The customers told us that's important too. So we changed the policy. But back to the cabin, which is you know, probably the most crucial area of the Customer Experience. This is where people are spending the most time we have a we were getting a lot of different feedback. A is a driver. We knew it was the most important part of the journey. And the

customers were telling us several things. They told us that when they're boarding one of their anxiety points is linspace and you see that on every carrier, anyone who goes to board, I don't care what their boarding procedure is. There's a lot of crowding when you fly the competition because people want in space. So we're adding bigger bins on our planes with respect to the seat itself. And that's personal space. customers told us they want more comfort and more functionality.

So actually, just recently last week, I was in Germany and we showcased our new seats that we're coming out with next year with partner Recaro and the seats the way I like to describe and they were built to take care of your neck, back and bottom and the cushion that goes in it's it's a fantastic headrest. I'm one of those people who can never quite get the right the right spot or fall asleep on a plane. It is a beautiful

headrest, very comfortable. There's more support for the back, more support for the bottom so as far as the seat goes, very comfortable but then the second part of that equation is the functionality. And so what we've done in front of you is we put a personal device holder so that and it's ergonomically designed so that you know you're comfortable and your necks not stiff after two or three hours right in front of you. Power, USB A and C fast charging power right within an

arm's reach. So you don't have to reach down below or there isn't a box that's getting in the way of your feet. A tray table that has two cupholders, I'm right handed, but 10% of the world's population is left handed including three people in my house. And so it's got dual cupholders and we think that that's important to people and not just someone who's left handed but people traveling with families. Sometimes you've got a kid and you kind of move the cup over but then you don't have a

spot for a cup. And every piece of it is designed for comfort, functionality and really productivity so I'm really proud of that. All of that is based on what we heard from the customer. And what we went and did and 18 months of rigorous testing, research all kinds of discerning customer segments. And they sort of helped us design it. They gave us feedback on these different parts. And so there's a perfect example right there. And it's another example when the competition is taking things

away. We're giving more things to the customer and that's what we're proud of.

not just a function of the surveys though. You know, you are very good at using your survey data from what I gather based on experiences that I've had with the airline. If I've ever provided survey input, I do get feedback, which is pretty unusual, I think from a lot of people who do solicit feedback, but don't necessarily let you know in a closed loop sense whether that survey is being used.

And I think that's a very important practice to be regularly looking at what the customer is telling you live, not just the data, but literally in their own words. So

degree program in Customer Experience, right? So we're trying to figure out how do we train the next generation of people because I've spent my career taking people who were in OPS who suddenly got positioned in this newfangled role called Customer Experience, not knowing anything about the core

competencies needed to make it happen. So I'm asking you kind of as somebody who sits in that job, day in and day out for a major airline, what you would want to give by way of guidance to somebody who's coming new to a role or maybe some curriculum development team that's trying to make sure people are ready to step into the job. What are the core competencies you think of a Customer Experience digital experience officer in this technology powered human centered age?

think analytical skills are very important and helpful. The ability to appreciate the big picture, the ability to understand intention, what is the customer intending to do, and how are we delivering versus that and of course, you can have the best methodical plan. But if you don't deliver it with that warmth, and hospitality, you know, it doesn't go very well. I'm gonna give you an example here that blows me away. I

mentioned looking every Monday at the data. And every Monday when I looked through the scores, I'll look through, we use a NPS scale, and you know, nines and 10s are promoters. Then you've got folks who are sort of on the fence neutral and then detractors. I'm stunned. Every Monday I shouldn't be. When I look at the number of people who had maybe a three or four hour delay a pretty rough experience, and they give us a

10 and they give us a 10. Now nearly every reason every time they give us a 10 It's because of our people, which has nothing to do with technology. It has nothing to do with some digital feature in that case. It has to do with how our people handle the situation. Did they communicate well? Did they hustle? Did they show caring support for the customer? I

don't know about you? I don't know that I'm a good enough person to have a four hour delay and take time to go write a note and give a company attend and tell them how great they were. That's how powerful our people are. And I think that that is a core understanding. These days when everyone's talking about AI and of course all these things you need to deliver poor service with speed and accuracy. You just can't forget about the human element because it is the most defining piece of the

Customer Experience and I have data that proves it. It shows when people get good hospitality are not in a clean experience or a disruptive experience and nothing moves the needle more than that. So I would also just counsel them to keep that in mind. In addition to journey maps and data and research and everything else, the delivery and the recoverability with your humans delivering the service has to be fantastic. So

Christmas. Well, we actually lived in Florida at the time that our home was based out of Colorado and I went back to where my wife was from my son was in Colorado, and my daughter was trying to get back but emotionally it was impossible for her to seem to figure out how to do that. I mean, she was just not in a place and she had to change her ticket several times through southwest they could not have been more gracious, they could have not been more kind more loving, more

empathic. They had a business to run and clearly they had seats to fill. But my daughter got to that Christmas only because of the nurturance of the people at Southwest so number one my son got married, and on his honeymoon he took a Southwest flight where they they created a crown for both the king for him and his wife made out of peanut bags, right? These are stories and we live on stories in our society. And I think those are

all human centered stories. The technology is satisfied or dissatisfied, but the people made both of those things happen. Blessings to you for what you do each and every day to make it happen for travelers like me who absolutely love the brand. And I certainly can pay to fly first class on other airlines. But if I have the opportunity to fly southwest, I just know that it's going to be an incredible experience from a

human perspective. So thank you for that. I want to make sure that everybody knows kind of about where they can learn more about Southwest Airlines Southwest airlines.com If you're not flying, you guys are pretty much everywhere in the US right? Is there any place you're not flying that I should be aware of?