Do you hear that? It’s the sound…of silence. Since rolling out our Cashless Cabin on September 9th, Customers and Employees alike have been singing the praises of the new credit card or coupon-only inflight drink purchases. No more clinging and clanging of change, just the sweet, gentle beep of a credit card transaction going through.
I sat down with Joe Mendez, Regional Director of Provisioning in Dallas, to get the inside scoop of what exactly went on behind the scenes during the Cashless Cabin roll-out. It turns out the idea had been simmering for awhile, but it had taken more than a year of planning, coordinating, and communicating to bring it to the point of implementation. And with more than 22 Provisioning locations, 500 planes, 1,500 devices, and 9,000 Flight Attendants to train, you can imagine the process took some delicate handling. But on September 9th, the roll-out was (to quote Coffee Talk's Linda Richman) "like buttah."
The secret to CC's success? "Communication. Lots and lots of it," Joe says. In fact, focus groups for Inflight and Provisioning were set up to better gauge their reactions and get valuable feedback. "The end product had a tremendous amount of input from people in every field," he says. Not to mention the 24-hour command center set up at Headquarters for the first three days CC went into effect. Technology and Provisioning were on-call for any concerns, questions, and feedback from the field. The first day was flooded with calls, but quickly tapered off as everyone found their footing.
Southwest wasn't the first airline to go cashless, and Joe describes the former process as "manual, tedious, time-consuming, with a whole bunch of redundancies." Not to mention the oft-heard cry for help over the intercom on flights: "Please press your call button if you have change for a twenty." But asking for change is thankfully now a thing of the past.
I managed to flag down Dallas-based Flight Attendant Jason Reyna long enough to grill him on the Inflight perspective. He says Flight Attendants caught on quickly to the new gadget, which is impressive considering training consisted of a one-hour online video. Jason had nothing but rave reviews about the change: "It's easier, and at the end of the day, it saves time." He was also more than a little impressed with the tech support during roll-out, raving that "people were on hand constantly to help us out with whatever questions we had." Hmmm...sounds like that Positively Outrageous Service I always hear about.
So far Customer reaction has been varied, but once people get used to the change, Jason expects sales to go up. The most popular drink ordered on Jason's flights? Bloody Mary.
So whether you unwind with a merlot or pep up with a Monster, remember your plastic. Oh, and if you don't have a credit/debit card, you can purchase drink coupons with cash at the ticket counter before boarding. Cheers!
