After more than a decade of loyalty to United Airlines, where I have racked up more than a million lifetime miles, and where I have routinely reached 1K status (i.e 100,000 miles) by April 1^st of each year, I am now going to be giving over much of my annual travel time to Southwest Airlines.

Actually, this move is not linked to service experience as such, although this post is. The reason for me enrolling in Southwest’s Rapid Rewards program is simply down to the fact that after another 15 years of service and loyalty, this time to my former employer, I have a new role as senior vice president and chief marketing officer for KANA Software. This new position at least for now requires me to commute from my home in Orange County in the Southland to San Jose in the Bay Area of California each week, and the most convenient and lowest cost option is with Southwest.

Now if you are one of nearly 500 people who have seen fit to follow me on Twitter, you will have seen a tweet from me on Monday June 27^th stating “Thanks @SPIRITmagazine @SouthwestAir for making a middle seat trip a Good Experience.”

For someone used to flights of 14 to 24 hours in duration, one has to admit that the just under an hour flight from Santa Ana to San Jose hardly even ranks as air travel at all, but due to ones current lack of status and Southwest’s (let’s call it) novel approach to open seating, I was at the back of the bus in a middle seat; never ideal even on short trips. Yet thanks to Southwest it was a good experience.

I don’t usually read in flight magazines, and I generally find they are the tool of next to last resort when you have nothing left to entertain you (last resort is the Sky Mall magazine, which offers privacy tents for cats along with other sundry knick knacks of questionable value). However, this month’s SPIRIT, the Southwest airlines in flight magazine was a special edition, celebrating the 40 year anniversary of the Southwest Difference, or the “little airline that could” as they like to somewhat appropriately position themselves. And what a good read it was.

Amongst the various articles on the history of the airline I was particularly drawn to the postscript from Southwest’s Chairman, President, and CEO Gary Kelly, which very succinctly described the culture and mission of the airline, established in 1971 and still growing strong. I like the fact that they always capitalize the word Customer, just as they do Employee, and in the postscript, Kelly refers to providing “one Brand, one Customer Experience” also capitalized. The reference to the single brand is based on Southwest’s acquisition of AirTran Airways, and Kelly discusses the work going on “behind the scenes to integrate the operations and to eventually provide a uniform Customer Experience.” This is not dissimilar to the message currently been given by United’s President and CEO Jeff Smisek in reference to their combination with Continental.

The latter is a KANA customer, and one of a growing number of domestic and global carriers seeking to deliver in the words of KANA’s new tagline “Good Experiences. On Brand. On Budget.” For more on that, and KANA’s mission to deliver service experience management check out KANA EVP and CTO Mark Angel’s blog “When Good is best.” Interestingly, Southwest is not a KANA Customer. Perhaps it’s time we talked.

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