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Southwest Airlines Community

Thank you for your feedback on our Digital Experiences in 2019!

MarkHursh
Employee
Employee

As we head into 2020, we wanted to personally thank you all for your support of our Southwest Digital experiences here on the Southwest Community. Your feedback on on our digital experiences, including southwest.com, our mobile apps, and our Inflight Entertainment and Wi-Fi, has been so helpful to our Cohearts who are constantly working to improve these experiences.  

 

To show you how helpful your feedback has been, below is a listing of just some of the improvements we’ve launched across our Digital Customer experiences in 2019. This year we were able to launch so many great new capabilities for our Customers, including in-app chat, to better inflight games, to tracking unused funds and many more. Many of these improvements were prioritized based upon Customer feedback through the Southwest Community, our app store feedback, and internal research. This list shows how much your feedback matters and how we are working to constantly improve your Southwest travel experience.  Plus, becuase of all your great feedback and support we earned J.D. Power’s No.1 Ranking for Southwest.com in customer satisfaction with airline travel websites.  

 

Thank you so much for your engagement this year and wishing you all a fantastic 2020!

 

With LUV,

Mark Hursh, Director of Digital Customer Platforms, Marketing

Jim Jett, Sr. Director of Southwest.com and Mobile Apps, Technology

Tony Roach, Managing Director of Customer Experience

 

 

Improvements made to Southwest Digital Experiences in 2019

(Listed in order by most recent)

 

Dec 16, 2019 – Feedback Tool for our Websites and Apps

We activated a tool to better gauge your feedback on our websites and apps. We had great success improving our roadmaps by analyzing your feedback from the our Southwest app store reviews. Now, we have better technology in place to help us understand your feedback when using all of our digital experiences. Look for more targeted use of the “in the moment” feedback through our website, apps and inflight portal in 2020.

 

Dec 12, 2019 - Inflight Portal Assistance – Phase 2

We improved our southwest.com homepage while you’re inflight. Now, if you are connected to the SouthwestWiFi network and navigate to www.southwest.com instead of www.southwestwifi.com a special message will display to lead you back to our Inflight portal so you can watch our onboard content or use our onboard WiFi. This should help folks get back to enjoying our Free Inflight Movies*, Free Inflight App Messaging*, Free Inflight Live TV*, Free Inflight Games*, Free Inflight Music*, and more while onboard. We also have similar functionality available at mobile.southwest.com and in our iOS™ and Android™ Apps.

 

Dec 9, 2019 - Track and Display your Unused Funds in your Southwest Account

We launched a frequently requested feature to allow Customers to view a list of their unused travel funds directly in their Southwest Account at www.southwest.com. Funds that remain from a cancellation or change made after Dec 3, 2019, and included a Customer’s Rapid Rewards number, will automatically appear in your Southwest.com or SWABIZ.com account. Lookup your balance now.

 

Nov 8, 2019 - Mobile Lookup and Spend Travel Funds

The mobile website and apps were enhanced to allow Customers to lookup the current balance and spend funds from unused Southwest travel funds, vouchers and gift cards. Now, Customers can find and spend those funds across all Southwest digital storefronts enabling more self-service. This was one of our top app store suggestions.

 

Nov 1, 2019 – Full Inflight Movie Listing available on the Southwest Community

We started posting our full listing of Inflight movies on the Southwest Community. We are also actively working in 2020 to improve our main Inflight Entertainment & WiFi overview page on Southwest.com to provide the full inflight entertainment listing. Here’s our December 2019 post.

 

Oct 29, 2019 – Multi-passenger Mobile Boarding Passes

In late 2019 we began testing improvements to the multi-passenger experience by enabling all passengers to receive a boarding pass on their mobile devices. We have this now being tested on flights between six airports and have seen great success from the first 10,000 uses oft the feature. This new capability will resolve a top Customer complaint and enable additional self-service with full rollout planned for early 2020. Plus, it will help us be more efficient and more green by no longer requiring paper printed documents on these reservations.

 

Oct 11, 2019 – Free Inflight Messaging Support for Laptops

We brought our Free Inflight Messaging* service to desktop and laptop browsers so Customers can now use iMessage and WhatsApp on their Mac or Windows PCs. Simply connect to our inflight network, SouthwestWiFi, and activate Free Messaging after you go to the Inflight Portal. Note: Free Inflight Messaging service only allows access to iMessage and WhatsApp and the apps must be downloaded before connecting to the SouthwestWiFi network.

 

Oct 1, 2019 – Enhanced Free Inflight Games

We made our Free Inflight Games* available on the Inflight Entertainment Portal even better. They now work with mobile devices and we increased the game count from two to eight games. We’re still testing the right game mix and will be continuing to optimize the game selection in 2020. Available only on WiFi-enabled aircraft. Limited-time offer. Where available.

 

Sept 3, 2019 – Make Travel Funds Easier to Find on the Southwest.com Purchase Page

We heard from Customers calling into our reservations centers that it was difficult to apply travel funds on the purchase page on southwest.com. We made this section bolder and more visible to make it easier to find where to apply your travel funds.

 

Aug 5, 2019 – Drink Coupon Improvements to the Apple Wallet™ Mobile Boarding Passes

We heard from our Flight Crews and our Southwest Community friends that it was difficult for Customers who purchased Business Select to find their Drink Coupon when using the Apple Wallet mobile boarding pass. We moved the Drink Coupon “= YES” indicator to the front of the pass if you have purchased Business Select. Prior to this change it was located on the back of the pass which was cumbersome to discover. Now Customers can simply show that indicator to our Flight Attendants to receive their free inflight drink, where available.

 

Aug 1, 2019 – Inflight Portal Redesign

We heard from Customers that it was difficult to find our inflight entertainment offerings, including Free App Messaging*, Free Movies*, Free Live TV*, and our $8 WiFi day passes*, with our prior portal design. We embarked on a redesign effort to better promote these free offerings and also made the design easier to read in a dark cabin. This led to dramatically increased usage of our free offerings while inflight.

 

July 18, 2019 – Dynamic Mobile Boarding Passes

We heard complaints in the app store about gate and flight time information on the mobile boarding passes not always matching the displays in the airport. We improved the Apple Wallet and Google Pay mobile boarding passes so they dynamically update with the most recent flight boarding time, departure time and gate location. Now, changes to these times are automatically pushed to your Apple Wallet or Google Pay boarding passes.

 

July 1, 2019 – Apple Pay® for Air Tickets, EarlyBird and Inflight WiFi

We heard frustration that Customers on Apple devices couldn’t use their digital forms of payment stored in their Apple Wallet. We enabled Apple Pay for tickets, EarlyBird and Inflight WiFi* in our iOS app and Inflight Portal to make purchasing tickets even easier.

 

Mar 25, 2019 – Mobile Day of Travel Self Service

We received frustrations with the app store not being able to perform commonly used day-of travel activities in the mobile apps. We made our mobile apps easier to use to enable more self-service by allowing Customers to add and update Airport Special Assistance requests as well as add their Rapid Rewards Number, Known Traveler Number, Redress Number and International Travel information to bookings.

 

Feb 20, 2019 – Inflight Portal Assistant Phase 1

We heard from our Inflight Cohearts and Customers that connecting to our Inflight portal was sometimes confusing as it required knowing to type in www.southwestwifi.com after connecting to SouthwestWiFi. We activated technology that makes connecting to the Inflight Portal even easier. Now, after connecting to the SouthwestWiFi network, supported devices will show a helpful login page with a button to go directly to the Inflight Portal homepage. You no longer need to remember a special address. We saw dramatically improved take rates of our Inflight Portal after rolling out this new capability.

 

Feb 13, 2019 – PayPal® for Mobile Tickets and EarlyBird

We added PayPal to our mobile website and apps enabling usage of PayPal across all Southwest digital storefronts. Now you can use your PayPal wallet or PayPal credit to make purchases while on the go as well on Southwest.com.

 

Jan 23, 2019 – In-App Customer Service Chat

We heard from our Customers in the app stores and from post-call surveys that you wanted to be able to chat with us when you have a question. We activated that functionality for our logged in Customers using our iOS and Android app. This feature provides chat support for Past Trips, Upcoming Trips, Rapid Rewards and Policies and Procedures directly with Customer Support and Services representatives.

 

Thank you so much for your invaluable feedback. We hope you’ll continue to stay engaged with us here on the Southwest Community, as your feedback is what shapes our future Customer travel experiences.

 

Some additional love from our Cohearts in General Counsel...

* Free Inflight Movies and on-demand TV content requires the Southwest app to be downloaded from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store before your flight. Free Inflight Live TV and Free iHeartRadio Music may be restricted on international flights due to licensing restrictions Free Inflight Messaging service only allows access to iMessage and WhatsApp (must be downloaded before the flight). Available only on WiFi-enabled aircraft. Limited-time offer. Where available.