Summary
- Southwest Airlines executives personally called and thanked their Customer Support & Services employees for his or her day by day assistance to passengers.
- Southwest values their employees and their culture of low ego and serving others.
- Events just like the Heart 2 Heart Connection help maintain worker morale and appreciation in a distant work environment.
Pilots and flight attendants are commonly thought to be having the toughest jobs within the airline industry, but there’s also a little-talked-about group of employees who need to uphold themselves to the best standard within the face of dissatisfied passengers – Customer Service Representatives.
These unsung heroes at Southwest Airlines got a surprise last week once they picked up their phones and located the airlines’ top executives on the opposite end, thanking them and expressing appreciation for the work they do.
The boss is on line one
Employees at Southwest’s Customer Support & Services (CS&S) Department were pleasantly surprised on November seventh once they received personal phone calls from the airline’s President & CEO, Bob Jordan; COO, Andrew Watterson; Senior Vice President of Operations and Hospitality, Steve Goldberg; and Vice President of Customer Support & Services, James Ashworth. Each executive personally thanked the workers on the phone for the work they do in assisting the airlines’ passengers each day.
Regarding the experience, President & CEO of Southwest Bob Jordan had the next to say:
He went on to say,
Photo: Southwest Airlines
While the airlines’ top executives were on the phone, over 300 corporate employees also volunteered to make about 1,500 calls to 714 coworkers, whom they nickname ‘Cohearts.’ The calls were made during an event that the airline calls Heart 2 Heart Connection, which took place at Southwest’s Corporate Campus in Dallas, Texas.
A tricky job
Customer Support is not any easy task at any airline, from having to take care of irate passengers who’ve lost their luggage to managing booking errors. It’s a position that demands patience, resilience, and, above all, having the ability to uphold the airline’s fame with its passengers.
Southwest moved its entire Customer Support & Services department to totally distant status in 2022. This meant that the workers would now be further faraway from day by day operations in a physical context, making it harder for them to feel appreciated or seen by their coworkers who retain a everlasting desk at considered one of Southwest’s offices.
Photo: Southwest Airlines
To mitigate the potential morale and cultural ellipses the move to a distant position can create, Southwest says of the event that,
“…the ‘Heart 2 Heart Connection’ event is considered one of the various ways Southwest shares its unique culture of caring with Employees.”
Southwest is not any stranger to reaching out to its employees and thanking them in a technique or one other, with probably the most recent example stemming from the systems meltdown the airline experienced in the course of the holiday period of 2022. There, bonuses totaling $45M were handed out to staff that helped the airline get through the difficult period as a gesture of gratitude.
Maintaining culture within the aviation industry
Company-wide events reminiscent of the Heart 2 Heart Connection at Southwest are nothing latest on this industry, as airlines need to work hard to maintain their employees pleased under increasingly tough conditions, as travel rises back as much as 2019 levels.
As an example, in an effort to acknowledge the work their staff does, Delta Air Lines announced a 5% raise for all staff earlier within the yr. Moreover, United Airlines recognized their Denver Hub employees’ work in a newsletter earlier this yr. Highlighting how well they perform during difficult travel periods.
All of this work further emphasizes just how necessary worker appreciation is in keeping the airline industry operating on the very highest standard, benefitting the flying public greatly.