Southwest remembers the customer

Best Customer Service — Airlines, Americas · Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards

There are complicated Freddie categories.

This isn’t one of them.

Best Customer Service asks members something wonderfully simple:

How do they treat you?

In 2023, Freddie voters in the Americas answered Southwest.

Rapid Rewards takes Best Customer Service, continuing a long relationship between Southwest and Freddie voters.

The timing makes the award particularly interesting.

Southwest was emerging from the enormous December 2022 operational meltdown that stranded travelers and generated the sort of headlines airlines generally prefer competitors to have.

Four months later, loyalty-program members still voted Rapid Rewards best for customer service.

That’s worth thinking about.

Frequent travelers understand that airlines break. Weather happens. Computers fail. Bags occasionally decide they’d rather vacation somewhere else.

Customer service isn’t necessarily about preventing every problem.

Often it’s about what happens next.

Southwest’s culture has always leaned heavily on its people, and Freddie voters apparently believed there was still something worth rewarding.

Sometimes loyalty really is about points.

Sometimes it’s about the person on the other side of the counter.