Nuts About Southwest Demonstrates True Social Interaction

It’s one of the leading corporate blogs on the Internet, and it just turned one year old. Nuts About Southwest’s Brian Lusk took the time to interview with the Buzz Bin and give us some insights on how the blog has helped the airline. In a very revealing interview, Lusk says the company changed strategic direction on assigned seating and advanced scheduling thanks to community feedback on the blog. Read on for an exciting look at how community and transparency can work to benefit a major company.

BB: How does it feel now that Nuts About Southwest has passed that year mark?

BL: The one-year mark is a significant milestone with our blog, and it has been an exciting and gratifying year. It seems odd to say this, but considering that a year is like a lifetime in the blogosphere, our blog has matured and received a lot of accolades from other bloggers. It has become a source of information for the mainstream media, including CNN and The Wall Street Journal, but to us the greatest accomplishment is that the blog has become a part of our readers and our Company’s life.

BB: How has the company embraced the blog?

BL: This has taken many forms. Our President, Colleen Barrett, is an avid reader (and occasional blogger), and she looks upon the blog as both a Customer Service focus group/laboratory and a way that we build Customer relationships.

We now have more Officers and Leaders at the Director level interested in making posts, in addition to Colleen, Gary Kelly (our CEO), and Jeff Lamb (our Vice President of People and Leadership Development. By the way, Jeff is an original member of our Blogger Team. Beyond that, we have seen a big increase in the number of Employees posting comments and entering into dialogue with our Customers, and we have seen an increase in interest among Employees who want to become bloggers and an increase in Employees commenting on the blog.

BB: In addition to comments, how do customers participate?

BL: So far, we have had several Customers who have contributed guest posts. Kim Seale, who is a longtime flyer with us, posted his thoughts about what Southwest means to our Customers. Kim also contributed an interactive post, asking readers to identify a part in the cabin of the aircraft.

Francisco Delgado, a sailor who is serving on the USS Nimitz, contributed a post about Thanksgiving, and we are currently running a serial version of his deployment diary about life on the ship. We also try to physically interact with our more prolific readers. Kim was invited to attend our annual Message to the Field in Dallas (a “state of the airline� presentation and pep rally all rolled into one). When Francisco returned home to Albuquerque for his last leave before deployment, several of us on the Blog Team flew over from Dallas to meet and surprise him. We took him an autographed soccer ball signed by the Blog Team (including Colleen) and most of the Albuquerque Station Employees and a model aircraft of New Mexico One, which is painted like the New Mexico flag.

Several other bloggers have visited our Headquarters Building for a tour. We would like to explore some other face-to-face events going forward.

BB: Tell us about how the blog changed the airline’s thinking on assigned seating?

BL: Prior to all of the publicity surrounding our announcement that we were exploring alternate methods to our traditional open seating policy, the number one request that we received from Customers was to begin assigning seats. Of course, we never want to turn away potential Customers, so we owed it to ourselves to explore the option.

The response we received from our existing Customers was overwhelming, and their comments ran about 90 percent in favor of keeping open seating. Some of this came as correspondence, but we received about 700 comments to Gary Kelly’s two blog posts on this issue.

Although the issue hasn’t been completely decided, we have made the decision that, if we stay with open seating, we never again will apologize for it and will consider it to be a proud Southwest difference. Additionally, some of those who favor open seating had concerns about our boarding process and submitted suggestions, which we carefully considered. The blog played a huge role in that because it concentrated those thoughts into one place.

BB: And with advanced scheduling?

BL: Unlike most airlines, we don’t post up to eleven months of future schedules. We normally will start with five to six months and let it drop to about 120 days and occasionally as low as 90 days.

When we put up a post about changes to southwest.com, we started getting folks posting with questions about when the schedule would open and complaints that they couldn’t book summer travel. One of our bloggers, Bill Owen, who works in Schedule Planning, then did a post explaining why we restrict our booking window—primarily because future schedules are unreliable. We also didn’t announce the schedule opening date out of fear Customers would be upset if we had to change it.

Concurrent with Bill’s post, the schedule was nearing the 90-day window. Bill was inundated with 253 comments. As a result of this, we made the decision to strictly adhere to the 120 days minimum and to let people know the tentative date the new schedule would go up for booking. Bill explained these changes in several followup posts, including one called, “I Blogged, You Flamed, We Changed.�

BB: So there’s a true conversation with your customer base?

BL: Absolutely! And, that is one of the most exciting things about the blog. Keep in mind, though, that the conversation goes well beyond “commercial topics.� We have run posts on colonoscopies (Bill Owen did this one and received a call from a man thanking Bill for saving his life), candy corn, food, reading, community service, the Tuskegee Airmen, baseball, food, and the list goes on. Many of these posts have no specific Southwest “connection,� other than they were written by our Employees.

They simply are conversations you might have with any friend, and we consider our participants to be our friends. But, it builds relationships with our Customers. This is very similar to the relationships our Station and Inflight Employees build with their regular Customers.

BB: What tips would you offer other corporate bloggers?<

Gosh, that is a difficult one, especially considering that each company has a different voice and culture. Generally speaking, I’d say to be ready to commit to the blog because once you go live, it is a living, breathing creature. We found out that the time commitment was more than we had originally thought, and as your blog grows, it takes more time to nurture and feed it. You can’t just “put it out there� and ignore it.

That commitment should come from the top in your organization. You should also be genuine in your blog, and if you have something to hide, you probably shouldn’t be blogging. While a blog is an excellent tool to highlight and reflect your culture, it isn’t the device to change your culture. One last thing to consider is that it takes guts to let people post the negative about your organization, but it is a way to build the trust that shows you really do care about what your Customers think.