Marketing Above the Noise

10 How Employees Raise the Volume

Airlines are notorious for poor customer service, from losing baggage to canceling flights to treating passengers as necessary annoyances. How unusual is it, then, to hear the story of a passenger who had such a positive experience on a flight that she staged a public display of thanks in an airport terminal.

Southwest Airlines passenger Shawna Suckow, an author, walked off a flight to Minneapolis in mid- 2013 and left behind her laptop, which stored the only copy of her new book’s nearly completed manuscript. By the time she realized what had happened, the plane couldn’t be accessed by the gate crew. But a Southwest employee stepped into the breach, searching the empty plane and returning the laptop, which had ...