Airlines and Omotenashi – QFY 434

I spent a lot of times on airplanes this year already and I did not realize how poor my experiences was each time until I recently flew Southwest. I had a complicated dilemma that resulted in 2 changed flights but thanks to Southwest, I was able to make these change while standing in line for coffee at the airport and without a major financial impact. The power of customer service. Southwest understands it. Most other airlines don't. Coincidentally, as I was preparing for this episode, I stumbled across the concept of "omotenashi" in a blog post by Seth Godin. I compare it to WOW - wowing the customer - something Southwest did to me the other day, and something we need to do more of. Instead of only looking for the most profitable customer, we should strive to make our customer happy first. Money will then follow - automatically.