Welcome SouthwestNicole!
 

As some may have heard, SouthwestWhitney has moved to another Department at Southwest. Please welcome SouthwestNicole to the team! She joined us last week and is in training, but she is not new to the Customer Relations Department and so brings with her a wealth of knowledge. For those of you on twitter, you can also find her there - @SouthwestNicole.

Nicole joins SouthwestVerity and SouthwestGabe (as well as SouthwestRob and me) as resources to assist you on flyertalk when possible and to help gather feedback from flyertalk to share with our Senior Leaders.

Catherine

Welcome
 

Welcome! It is so nice to have company reps here. Your efforts are appreciated.
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Welcome its nice to hear the company is listening

Thanks everyone! I'm happy to join the conversation. Feel free to message me with any questions.

-Nicole

Hello! Welcome to FlyerTalk and welcome to Southwest Airlines forum. Hope you enjoy for your stay. Looking forward to it.

Welcome. Great to have representatives here.

We really appreciate the support Southwest gives to FlyerTalk members. We try to give back by whining constructively. ;)

You see, for the most part we like airlines. In this forum most of us like Southwest. We want the airline to be successful and grow to serve more and more of our destinations. That is why, although we complain about devaluation of Rapid Rewards or other selfish concerns, we tend to become the most agitated when the airline makes what we see as self-destructive changes. That feedback is how we provide value to the airline, provided that the airline is willing to listen and act. Since I'm feeling verbose today I'll give a free sample:

Over four decades, Southwest built a solid reputation for value-priced high-quality coach class transportation. During the last several years Southwest has to some extent spent down that reputation. That must not continue. Southwest needs to remain the preferred choice for value-conscious customers. Letting another airline offer a better price now and then is not a problem. Letting another airline offer a higher-quality coach product is a huge problem, an unforced error.

For legacy airlines, socking the customer with a $150 change fee on a $200 ticket is an unforced error. That customer will take pains to move his business to Southwest. If enough of this happens it might offset higher fares or a lower quality coach product on Southwest, but that doesn't mean that Southwest would not have had a higher market share without devaluing its offering.

Air transportation is a commodity business. Unless you want to be RyanAir, maintaining and strengthening brand identity is the path to success.

Southwest is the Costco or airlines, offering value-priced quality. Costco would surely wither and die if it switched to Kmart merchandise. That could happen to Southwest if it does not maintain the quality portion of its brand identity.

So THAT'S why I like Southwest! I always wondered what it was. I love Costco. I haven't experienced the Kmart-700 plane yet though. I'll be doing that Monday. :(

SouthwestNicole - just to prepare you, I have prepared a sample question that I expect to be answered 7 minutes ago.

"I am a COS traveling in a shirt that reveals much cleavage and jeans with the waist below my knees. I have a a blue sleeve - pre-board pass, but I am upset that someone in a coma boarded before me. Its really not fair that I paid for EBCI but had to get the blue sleeve because I did not like my A3 boarding position. And Can you believe that a husband and wife (a2 & A4) lined up together in front of me? I know SHE was A4 because I took her purse and read her boarding pass. Anyways, when I FINALLY go on the plane, i was disappointed that the Wi-Fi was not turned on yet, and that the new seat pitch had been lowered. I measured it and instead of it being 16 inches of pitch, it was 15.98 inches. Really, can you believe it. I watched all 127 other people board the plane, and can you believe it. I SAW PEOPLE SAVING SEATS. The flight attendants didn't do anything about it. When we finally took off, there was no drink service and no peanuts as they muttered something about the short flight. I was OK though because I was on a hidden city ticket. We departed SFO only 25 minutes late and arrived at the next destination of OAK 3 minutes later. Usually it only takes 2 minutes but the Google plane was taking off at MOF so we had to circle. But the new Rapid Rewards SUCKS. How am I ever going to earn a free flight flying SFO to OAK. with the old Rapid Rewards, I could earn a free flight in ONE DAY, if I added in flying SFO-OAK-SAC-SJC-SFO. But damn that WN IT team, they never let me book a hidden city SFO-RNO-SFO ticket. I mean seriously, Cant they just fix that, along with DING that keeps sending me $3000 for a flight to ONT. I mean who in their right mind would ever want to fly to ONT. IF WN's IT Staff was really on the ball, they would just delete ONT from the Schedule. Speaking of the IT team, I am still using Dial Up internet and the web site is SO SLOW. So anyways, SouthwestNicole, I need help getting a refund for my flight, because I was insulted by the Gate Agent. I had explained that i had purchased 7 tickets and was volunteering to be bumped on all of them for the $150 vouchers it would earn me. The Gate Agent told me to go fly United. So, SouthwestNicole, can you help, case I have 8 tickets for sfo-oak-sck tickets and I need some of that money back to buy some lunch."

Welcome to FT! Glad to have you around.

You forgot expired drink coupons and same day only BS coupons for 6 a.m. flights. And no FC. And no assigned seating. And you bought Air-Tran so you should become like them. And serendipitous line position from A-list cancellations. And unenforced Fly By lanes. And why can we not go to Hawaii and other foreign countries. (I know, don't say it.)

Darn, aren't we a bunch of whiners?

But, hey, no RJ's, no change fees, and no bag fees.

I was and the seat was not comfortable