Dive Brief:
- Southwest Airlines is revamping its senior leadership through a slew of promotions and reporting changes, including the appointment of Tony Roach to the new role of SVP and chief customer officer, the company announced Monday. The changes take effect Dec. 1.
- Roach will oversee end-to-end customer experience, reporting to Ryan Green, the EVP and chief commercial officer for the airline. Roach, who has spent two decades at Southwest, will oversee marketing, CX, digital experience, travel products, innovation, customer engagement and customer support and services departments, Southwest said.
- Southwest is placing an emphasis on its operating structure, promoting Justin Jones to EVP of operations to lead the modernization and oversight of daily airline operations. Jones and Green will report to COO Andrew Watterson.
Dive Insight:
Southwest's 2022 ended with a perfect storm of bad weather and mass cancellations, and as a result, the airline has taken a hard look at its technology and operations this year. So far, it has committed $1 billion to IT upgrades and created a five-year operational modernization plan, paying close attention to its operating structure after communication gaps contributed to the grounding of thousands of flights last December.
By the end of Q1, the total bill for its winter turmoil surpassed $1.1 billion.
Nearly a year later, as part of the C-suite revamp, Southwest named chiefs of people, communications and corporate affairs. It also created a new organization to be led by Angela Marano, the now VP of AI and data transformation, which will focus on the infrastructure and governance required for capitalization on data and AI.
"We're collectively creating an organizational structure that reflects our priority of caring for the employees who serve our customers, elevating the experience of traveling and bolstering our foundational reliability and financial performance," Bob Jordan, president and CEO of Southwest, said in the announcement.
Southwest did not respond to requests for additional comment about its CX strategy by publication time.
Already, Southwest is improving its CX. A record number of customers signed up for its Rapid Rewards loyalty program in Q3, Green said during an October earnings call. The airline is also making changes to its rewards program, which is intended to ease how customers earn and use rewards.
Travel during one of the busiest seasons of the year — and Sunday marked the busiest day ever for the number of passengers screened by the Transportation Security Administration — largely went off without a hitch for every airline, Southwest included.
