On today’s episode, host Tom Butta is joined by two amazing guests from Southwest Airlines, Jonathan Clarkson, VP & Head of Marketing, and Megan Self, Senior Manager of Digital Experience. Needing no introduction, Southwest has consistently stood out from other airlines, and now aims to continue their deep focus on customer experience as they retool their mobile app for the future.
On today’s episode, host Tom Butta is joined by two amazing guests from Southwest Airlines, Jonathan Clarkson, VP & Head of Marketing, and Megan Self, Senior Manager of Digital Experience. Needing no introduction, Southwest has consistently stood out from other airlines, and now aims to continue their deep focus on customer experience as they retool their mobile app for the future.
Jonathan has been with Southwest for more than fifteen years, with prior experience at Pepsico, Pizza Hut, and Dr Pepper/Seven Up. Megan joined more recently back in 2019, but brings a wealth of experience to the team. In the conversation, you’ll hear how they view the Southwest mobile app as the way-finder to their customers’ flight paths, navigating them through each step of the process and providing them key, up to date details along the way.
Additionally, listen for some of the ways Jonathan gauges customer engagement through each step of the process. With a lot of drive focused on the initial app download, there are other key milestones he outlines that you can’t leave behind when building everlasting brand loyalty.
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Jonathan’s Bio
Jonathan joined Southwest in 2007 to help start the first Customer Insights Team in Marketing. He then moved his talents to the Loyalty Team to help launch the All-New Rapid Rewards program, and later took on additional responsibility for ancillary and boarding products.
Now, as VP Marketing with a focus on Southwest Airlines’ Loyalty, Partnerships and Products, Jonathan and his Teams are responsible for all ancillary and loyalty revenue initiatives at Southwest. These include general management of the Rapid Rewards program; the Chase Visa co-brand credit card portfolio and other partnerships; fare and day-of-travel products including Early Bird and Upgraded Boarding; ancillary revenue products including Hotels, Vacations, and Ground Transportation; and Customer Insights & Analytics. Prior to joining Southwest, Jonathan held marketing roles at Pepsico, Pizza Hut, and Dr Pepper/Seven Up.
Megan’s Bio
Megan is a proven leader with over 22 years of experience building brands and driving results across multiple industries. Prior to joining the team at Southwest Airlines, Megan was responsible for leading key agency accounts at the Richard Group as Principal, Vice President. The Richards Group, located in Dallas, Texas, is the largest independent branding agency in the U.S. Quadratic is a wholly-owned subsidiary focusing on direct response, CRM, digital analytics, data intelligence, and advanced analytics.
At Southwest, Megan is the Senior Manager of Digital Experience, where she is focused on using data to build the brand while driving results. Just some of the skills she brings to the table include business development, team leadership, marketing strategy, branding, traditional advertising (television, radio, print, and out-of-home), direct response advertising and marketing (direct mail, email, and mobile) digital, social media, customer relationship management (CRM), loyalty marketing, product marketing, media planning, media buying, test plan development (A/B and experimental design), data analytics, data visualization, web design, site analytics, site testing and personalization, and user experience.
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Guest Quotes
“It goes back to a customer-centric focus in recognizing that everything starts with the customer, and that we need to appeal to the customer's needs first and foremost, because that's what generates brand loyalty.” - Jonathan Clarkson
“Once you're checking in for your flight through completing your flight and getting to your destination, the app is what's in your hand facilitating that journey. It's truly the wayfinder in the person's hand to get them where they need to go as quickly as possible, and to make that as frictionless as possible is the goal.” - Megan Self
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Time Stamps
*(01:30) Background
*(03:30) How data has changed things
*(05:36) The Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Program
*(08:07) Leveraging data to offer relevant promotions
*(13:58) First time app-users, first time flyers
*(17:56) Why you should merge your digital and customer experience teams
*(19:56) Rapid Fire Questions
*(22:26) New live activities
*(24:56) Best advice given and received
*(28:47) Wrap-up
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Links
[00:00:00] Megan Self: Once you're checking in for your flight through completing your flight and getting to your destination, the app is what's in your hand facilitating that journey. It's truly the wayfinder in the person's hand to get them where they need to go as quickly as possible, and to make that as. Frictionless as possible is the goal.
[00:00:22] Jonathan Clarkson: It goes back to a customer-centric focus in recognizing that everything starts with the customer, and that we need to appeal to the customer's needs first and foremost, because that's what generates brand loyalty.
[00:00:37] Jonathan Clarkson: Welcome to Masters of Max, a mobile App Experience podcast. Please welcome your host, Tom Butta, chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at airship.
[00:00:49] Tom Butta: So we're really excited today to have two special guests from Southwest Airlines. Today on the show we have Megan Self, who is a senior manager in the digital and customer Experience group, and we have a really senior executive from Southwest, Jonathan Clarkson, who is both a Vice President and head of marketing.
[00:01:09] Tom Butta: Welcome to the show, both of
[00:01:10] Jonathan Clarkson: you. Thank you. Thank you, Tom. Thanks for having us. So,
[00:01:13] Tom Butta: uh, if I might start with you, Jonathan, you've got a fascinating background as a brand and marketing executive. I'm curious what led you to Southwest after having been in industries as far reaching as, you know? Well, pizza Hut, PepsiCo Parent company, right.
[00:01:28] Tom Butta: And Blockbuster.
[00:01:30] Jonathan Clarkson: Yeah, so I, I've been here at Southwest for going on 16 years, and I worked at the companies you, you just mentioned prior to that. So I've always been in marketing, but to your point, To, you know, a number of different industries the last 25 years or so as spans. My first job in marketing was actually in what we call customer insights, or back then it was market research or marketing research, and I think that that's probably what led me to Southwest at that time when I started here, Southwest didn't have, but they didn't conduct on any regular basis, any customer research surveys, focus groups, et cetera.
[00:02:09] Jonathan Clarkson: That was all a pretty novel concept here. Which I always thought was ironic. You could argue that we are, were even then one of the most customer centric companies in, in America. Certainly and certainly had our finger on the, the, the pulse in terms of the customer's voice. But we didn't really have any formal way of collecting that.
[00:02:27] Jonathan Clarkson: So I had the opportunity to come actually help start that group. Uh, when I started here as a, a senior manager of customer insights and. Product development. I always often joke that when, especially, especially true back then when the airlines hired you, they paid you for one job, but they asked you to do two.
[00:02:46] Jonathan Clarkson: So, uh, I, I got to start the insights team, and then I, I worked on some product stuff as well. But that, that's how I started and it all is born out of my initial marketing background, which is working in on
[00:02:57] Tom Butta: research. It's actually quite fascinating because as you, as you point out, Southwest, uh, was known as being just friendly airline, right?
[00:03:04] Tom Butta: Putting the customer first, and it was done with, I suppose, a bunch of great principles as well as, uh, maybe significant intuition, but not a lot of research. And so how has including the voice of the customer and having insights into, well, you know, Megan, in your case, you know, customer experiences, particularly now through digital means, which is seemingly what most of the experiences are until you actually get on board.
[00:03:30] Tom Butta: You know, how how has that changed things?
[00:03:33] Jonathan Clarkson: It, well, it's, it's, it's certainly evolved us. So, uh, those principles that you mentioned, that's absolutely right. We, we always felt as though anything that we did that was sort of designed to. Work for the benefit of the customer was the right thing to do. That was how her Kelleher and Colleen Barrett drew it up back in, uh, 1971 when we started.
[00:03:53] Jonathan Clarkson: Then that's endured. I think what has, what's ha what's transpired is we've gotten more, uh, more sophisticated in terms of research is the complexity of the industry and the company has grown. So we sort of needed to be able to have a constant pulse on what the customer's thinking, feeling, and saying. So it was, it wasn't a moment too soon, because as that complexity has increased, we've really needed to have a constant pulse on how people feel about things, so we can understand that and make changes where it's necessary.
[00:04:25] Tom Butta: J, just so everybody understands, like may, maybe you can point out like what some of that complexity is that you're referring to.
[00:04:32] Jonathan Clarkson: If you go back to our original, uh, route map, which was a legend, as a legend says, was drawn on a napkin. We were essentially just three cities. We had one aircraft that flew to three cities and we were, we would hit those cities on, you know, every couple hours.
[00:04:48] Jonathan Clarkson: And now we are nearing a thousand aircraft and we're flying to 118 different cities. And then all the network and scheduling and commercial elements that come with that sort of, that's what you've seen Southwest Airlines do over the last 53 years. Wow.
[00:05:08] Tom Butta: Yeah. That, that's amazing growth and uh, yeah, obviously with growth comes a lot of, a lot of complexity.
[00:05:14] Tom Butta: So one of the, it's interesting and, and probably makes complete sense of course, that someone who is in charge of customer insights, you know, was actually given the responsibility to, to create and grow the Rapid Rewards program, which is the program that rewards customers for their loyalty. Right. Tell us, maybe the two of you, you know, tell, tell us a little bit about that program.
[00:05:34] Jonathan Clarkson: Sure. I, I, I can start it. That was sort of the next step for me, was to come work on the Rapid Rewards Program in 2011. When we relaunched it back then, it was called the All new Rapid Rewards Program. So it's hard to, hard to believe that that was 12 years ago. But, but, but we, we were actually the first major airline to go to revenue based Earn, which means that the number of points that you earn is correlates back to the num, the amount of that you spend on your ticket.
[00:06:04] Jonathan Clarkson: And then we are have always been, one of the things we always pride ourselves on is being very, very transparent in terms of not only how many points you earn, but also how many points it costs to redeem for a ticket. And then the other big differentiator for us is there are no blackout dates. There are no, there's no seat that you can't redeem your points for if it's the last seat of the day on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
[00:06:29] Jonathan Clarkson: From Dallas to Phoenix, you can use your points on that seed. So we were able to craft a very customer friendly program that was. That was simple and, and was flexible. And then when you applied those principles across the breadth of stations or cities that we cover, it made for a really, really compelling program.
[00:06:51] Tom Butta: Mm-hmm. Megan, how has the app played a role in, in the rewards program, it seems like, sure. You know, the, the app is, uh, well, it's, it's in your pocket and your hand all, all the time, especially for travelers.
[00:07:03] Megan Self: Yeah, the app has played a really big piece of our strategy just because the majority of our customers are authenticated when they're using our app, so we know exactly who they are and can serve them the right content based on where they are in that, in that journey with us.
[00:07:16] Megan Self: Whether they just booked a ticket or they're looking to check in, or they're somewhere in that day of travel. We can really capitalize on that to ensure that they have the right information and can have the most seamless experience for that day of travel as possible, as well as use it as a tool to upsell and cross-sell based on the type of fair that they purchased and where they're headed, and, and leverage that to just grow the customer relationship and eventually, or ideally grow their loyalty by providing their best in class experience for them.
[00:07:46] Megan Self: And you know, with the age of the third party cookie potentially going away one day when, if and when Google ever pulls the plug on that the app and the way that we allow customers to book directly with us is a huge competitive advantage cuz we know who the customers are and a lot of the other airlines don't have that data set.
[00:08:03] Megan Self: So it'll position us well for the future.
[00:08:06] Tom Butta: Yeah. So you're talking about first and zero party data, right? Exactly. How much like forward looking work do you do or predictability? Uh, do you maybe learn from quote unquote machine learning or behavior learning? You know, there are patterns that you might recognize and then can maybe forecast.
[00:08:25] Tom Butta: It seems like you fly these roots a lot. Here's some, I don't know, special on these roots, or do you do things like that?
[00:08:31] Megan Self: So right now a lot of that's leveraging our data science team, and then we're taking the models that we're building in house and implementing those through a variety of tools. Adobe Target being one of those in Adobe Audience Manager.
[00:08:43] Megan Self: But as we look to the future, we're looking at customer data platforms, which most of those come with some type of AI component to serve up the next best offer or the next best journey. And that's absolutely in our roadmap of what we'll be looking to onboard in order to best serve that customer. And again, get them the right content no matter where they are and the journey and the purchase cycle with us.
[00:09:04] Jonathan Clarkson: It's a space that we're evolving in and she mentioned that we're leverage our data science tools to be able to do some of that predictive modeling. And an example would be when, what we call a churn model. So by the time a customer has decided to stop flying us, It's, it's kind of too late, right? Like we can go spend resources to get them back like we would a new customer, but we'd rather just keep them in the fold while we still have them.
[00:09:29] Jonathan Clarkson: So we can watch people's patterns over time to see what do you do? What are the behaviors that you exhibit or fail to exhibit before you stop flying us? And we can see that six months, nine months, a year, upstream. So if we start to see the signs of that, rather than wait for you to get all the way to the end, fall all the way out of the program, we can tread to intercept you earlier on and do, and do a better job of making the, the program in the airline sticky for you so you're less incentive to churn out.
[00:09:59] Jonathan Clarkson: Yeah.
[00:10:00] Tom Butta: So we talked a little bit about the app and how important it is because of the authentication. Uh, also because it's, it's, it's literally housing all of, you know, the. Well, the customer's information and everything that they need, um, that you're helping them with in terms of their, you know, their profile and their and their experiences.
[00:10:19] Tom Butta: Would you say that the app is kind of the center of the digital experience for your customers? How do you, how, how do you think about that?
[00:10:30] Megan Self: Sure. I'll, I'll take that one. Uh, I think it for the day of travel, it absolutely is the center and the hub of everything that's happening, leaning up to and following after.
[00:10:39] Megan Self: I think it plays an integral role, but maybe not the true hub, but. Once you're checking in for your flight through completing your flight and getting to your destination, it is what's in your hand facilitating that journey. Whether you're looking for, is it time to board, did my gate change? All of these different things that could happen, but making sure that it has, it's truly the dictionary or the wayfinder in the person's hand to get them where they need to go as quickly as possible, and then make that as.
[00:11:06] Megan Self: Frictionless as possible is the goal, but leading up to it, it's truly a cross-channel experience online, offline, as well as post after the fact of just understanding, okay, what, what type of flyer was that? And then what's the next, next action or follow up that they need from us and, and leveraging the data to really drive that journey.
[00:11:26] Jonathan Clarkson: Megan makes a great point. It, it is pretty fascinating. To think about how many over the course of the customer journey, starting from when they book to when they actually travel, how many different roles that same app has to play. So when you're booking, obviously it's, we're, we're using it as a promotional vehicle, but also have to have a booking flow that, uh, to use the term Megan used as frictionless to ensure that we drive the highest conversion that we can and kind of minimize or make it easy the number of decisions.
[00:12:00] Jonathan Clarkson: And the quality of the decisions that folks make when they, when they book. In between that and when you actually fly, there's a period of time where you, you see the app as sort of, it's a source of information for you. It may be information that's germane to the flight that you just booked. It may also be, hmm, I wonder how many loyalty points I have now as a result of, you know, having booked that or how many I will have.
[00:12:22] Jonathan Clarkson: Or maybe I could have enough points in my account to redeem for a flight in the future. So that's a capability that we actually just just launched where. A lot of the elements for your account that ex have here before only existed in the desktop version. Those are all now on the app too, so you can really see everything that's happening with your rapid rewards account with your phone.
[00:12:44] Jonathan Clarkson: And then, uh, I won't belabor what Megan talked about, but the day of travel is a whole different ballgame because then it has to be about wayfinding at a particular airport, how you're gonna get from the airport and back. What time the flight is, whether there are certainly is fired or not have delays, but occasionally they happen and the app's gotta be capable of telling you that.
[00:13:02] Jonathan Clarkson: What's your boarding position? Is it possible to buy a better boarding position? In many cases it is. Those are all the uses that, again, that same app provides, but it has a very different persona across the stages of the customer's journey.
[00:13:18] Tom Butta: Yeah. It's like having a friend in your pocket that's alerting you to, to things that are changing.
[00:13:22] Tom Butta: And did you know that your gate changed and did you know that you have a chance to border earlier and precisely which these are, these are lovely prompts, right? Yeah.
[00:13:30] Jonathan Clarkson: And it needs to be that way. If you, you think about that personal relationship that we all have with our device. Anyway, you know, it's, it's only when, when do you ever leave your phone?
[00:13:40] Jonathan Clarkson: Nobody forgets their phone anymore because you, you know, innately, they, you can't live without it. So it has to deliver all those different experiences for you. Our, our app has to do all those different things for you, and it has to be smart enough to do that at the right time. Yeah.
[00:13:58] Tom Butta: Is there a a critical point when you, when you get, say, a new customer, which is always exciting and always hard to do in this competitive world that we live in, but is there a critical stage, like, I don't know, they've downloaded the app, then what?
[00:14:12] Tom Butta: Like onboarding? How do you think about that process? So you've got, you know, you've got these rapid reward sort of travelers, right? And the experienced ones, but then you know, you need, you wanna do more with them as you talked about. You don't wanna lose them, you wanna do more with them and make them happy, but, But then there are others, you know, younger travelers that are traveling more or, or just people these days seem to be just doing more traveling post pandemic.
[00:14:37] Tom Butta: Right. What's that initial experience like? Of of, of onboarding them? Sure. Because that's key. I would think it's sort of that, I don't know, first date, like, you know what I mean?
[00:14:49] Megan Self: So the first time flyer is very important to us. We saw a large uptick with first time flyers during the pandemic when as chapel, you know, kind of bounced, started to bounce back.
[00:14:59] Megan Self: We saw a lot of first time flyers. For us, the mission one became let's educate them about why we're different and why they should continue to fly us so we could build up that brand loyalty. Cuz you know, to them it was likely just a way to get to their families after a long time of not not being able to do that.
[00:15:18] Megan Self: And so really trying to educate and build that brand loyalty from the first touchpoint both digitally. In the airport, you know, with gate agents, et cetera. But the follow up cross-channel follow up that we did with email and push and app experiences was really focused on helping drive that experience and again, build up their knowledge base about why us and why they should continue to apply us.
[00:15:43] Jonathan Clarkson: It's sort of different degrees of engagement. So certainly that initial app download is something we try to drive as as, as readily as we can because that's an important way we've just made the. The travel experience, again, the entire customer journey, easy for, easier for you once you have that. And then there's joining the loyalty program, which is another, an even deeper engagement because then you're, you, you're earning currency, you've got points to redeem, you're opting in, hopefully to different offers and and ways to accelerate your earn and your engagement with us.
[00:16:16] Jonathan Clarkson: And then there's redeeming for a flight, which is sort of the next step. We find that once people redeem for a flight, they generally have a good experience in part because the flight was free, but also because we aspire to give them a good experience and we see that on average that drives up customer's net promoter score from what it was prior to their redemption.
[00:16:38] Jonathan Clarkson: And then maybe the pinnacle of it, which is I think true of certainly of our other folks in the travel space and other retailers who, um, you may have. Airship may be working with, which is getting the customer to sign up for the co-brand credit card. That tends to be, maybe not the deepest, but a very deep level of engagement where people are thinking about the brand even when they're not flying.
[00:16:59] Jonathan Clarkson: They're swiping at the grocery store or at, uh, you know, when they're going shopping, but they're displaying our brand and they're earning points on something that's decidedly a non-travel experience. So, so I think there are certain, there are certainly gradients of it, but yes, it all starts with.
[00:17:16] Jonathan Clarkson: Onboarding 'em and getting, getting the app on the phone. Yeah.
[00:17:20] Tom Butta: Yeah. So one more question if I, if I might, about, about cross-channel and about the app. So we talk about managing customer experiences inside and outside the app. Do you think of those things that way and how they relate? Because at the end of the day, it's all about the customer experience, right?
[00:17:41] Tom Butta: But there are things that only can happen in the app, and then there are things that. Can get people to the app or maybe, I don't know, confirm transactions or, or, or what have you. How do you think about sort of inside and outside the app? We
[00:17:56] Megan Self: recently just merged our digital experience and our customer experience group into one department focused on that end-to-end experience because for us, No matter where you are in that journey, it's one customer journey that we have to think about all of the ways you interact with us.
[00:18:14] Megan Self: So it becomes a seamless, frictionless experience that gets you what you need when you need it, whether you're, you know, a first time flyer or a a-list preferred business traveler that we're getting you that content and the right information proactively at every step of the way. So for us, it's. The app is integral to all of that, but ultimately it's, it's one journey and it's one experience, and we have to get it right to retain our customers.
[00:18:42] Tom Butta: It's great to hear, and, and I, I'm not necessarily seeing everyone else that we come across as having that evolved of, of a point of view. They might on paper, but I think in practice they're continuing to be like, they're email experts and the reliance on, you know, these sort of classic promotional channels.
[00:19:01] Tom Butta: As independent of all this, of actually the experience. So congratulations. No wonder you're up to a thousand planes and you know all the roots that you have. It goes back
[00:19:12] Jonathan Clarkson: to a customer-centric focus and recognizing that everything starts with the customer and that we need to appeal to the customer's needs first and foremost, because that's what generates brand loyalty and keeps people in the fold.
[00:19:25] Jonathan Clarkson: Um, and in an industry that can be accused of commoditization. When you can focus on the customer and, and make improvements that are designed solely to make their experience better, and you can have your digital wears right next to the customer experience to ensure that we're doing that in the most modern and forward thinking way.
[00:19:46] Jonathan Clarkson: To your point, we think it makes a lot of sense to organize that way. Well,
[00:19:50] Tom Butta: great. So just in the interest of time, we might get into a rapid fire. Set of questions and I'd like for each of you to answer them if you don't mind. You ready?
[00:20:00] Jonathan Clarkson: Sure. We'll find out. Jc, you go first.
[00:20:04] Tom Butta: Okay. Android or iPhone?
[00:20:06] Jonathan Clarkson: iPhone.
[00:20:07] Tom Butta: iPhone. Okay. iPhone. All right, so I'm sure you have an app or two besides the Southwest app. Yeah. What's your favorite app
[00:20:17] Megan Self: Minds? DoorDash, because it just, the convenience of giving whatever you need within a few minutes to your house or having something taken from your house and delivered elsewhere.
[00:20:27] Megan Self: That's just, it's changed the way that we expect things to happen, like Amazon, but to me, the convenience economy, DoorDash is just killing it in
[00:20:35] Jonathan Clarkson: that space. Yeah. Kind of related to that one, I, I like OpenTable. I find that you, myself be, we go out to dinner a lot and for the restaurants that participate in OpenTable, I find that that's much easier than tracking down the phone number and or going through some other means of booking a table.
[00:20:55] Jonathan Clarkson: Yeah.
[00:20:56] Tom Butta: Yeah. It's pretty intuitive now. And, uh, and resi has been, uh, You're kind of coming along and, yeah. Yeah.
[00:21:02] Jonathan Clarkson: Securing, yeah. Not unlike, uh, DoorDash and Uber Eats and that, that old derby.
[00:21:07] Tom Butta: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Innovation doesn't last very long, does it? Right. Okay. So what new app feature or mobile trend are you currently loving or you're fascinated by?
[00:21:22] Megan Self: I'm truly fascinated by anything like Uber and DoorDash and all of those disruptors where we did one thing one way for so long, and then overnight we flip the switch and the expectation for what, how we interact with the brand or an experience is completely changed. So I love just watching the disruptors and the ones that continue to come up the chain.
[00:21:45] Jonathan Clarkson: I, you know, I, I just continue to be fascinated by, How first or, or zero party data is continually used to try to refine customer experiences And what you're seeing more and more of now, whether they call it like a retail media network or, or something like that, is you're seeing apps leverage what they know about a customer in order to sort of cross-sell them other products.
[00:22:08] Jonathan Clarkson: And the, the dance that's required to sort of be able to do that effectively and but not add friction to the core. In our case, booking experience or buying experience I think is, is just been something that continues to evolve and it's one, one that we're keeping a close eye on as well.
[00:22:26] Tom Butta: Just ask one specific question about something new.
[00:22:28] Tom Butta: What? What do you think of live activities? Have you experienced it? Have you followed it at all? It's push notifications on steroids basically, so it's just continuously updating for some period of time that you choose to set. And it could be day of travel actually could be kind of interesting. Although there's not necessarily a lot of change, but I don't know.
[00:22:49] Tom Butta: We're working with the, uh, with March Madness now, and boy oh boy, people are really fascinated with the scores. But these games are long and there's a lot of scores, right? So, right. Um, so there's a lot of updating going on. It's fascinating because it's giving you information without, I call it being interrupted, but without, without there, it's just natural notifications.
[00:23:10] Tom Butta: It's there if you wanna see it. Right, because you've expressed interest. So,
[00:23:15] Jonathan Clarkson: yeah, it seems like there would be an application for that for us somewhere. You mentioned flight times. I don't know if that's it or not. Right. Sometimes we're accused of by customers of being, of giving too much information because if the flight pulls forward 15 minutes, but then goes back to where it was before, some people feel like just kind of tell me when it's gonna leave, you know?
[00:23:35] Jonathan Clarkson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Certainty around it.
[00:23:37] Tom Butta: Yeah. Well, yeah, exactly. Okay. So maybe some, some other things that, that have to do just a little bit about your career and then we'll close it out. So what was the first paying job for
[00:23:47] Jonathan Clarkson: each of you? My very first paying job, I was a bag boy at a grocery store. There you go.
[00:23:54] Jonathan Clarkson: In, in Carrollton, Texas and I, this was back when Bag boys were allowed to accept tips, so we, it was pretty lucrative, all albeit brief career. As a bagger. Um, and I remember getting a lot of lessons from moms who are buying groceries for their families on how to pack, right? Not to put the soft stuff at the bottom and give it a good base and put the eggs at the top.
[00:24:20] Jonathan Clarkson: Um, so I, I learned a lot about where, where the produce and the eggs should go when you're filling a
[00:24:26] Tom Butta: paper bag. That's great. Yeah. Talk about a baseline job for a career in, in, in customer experience at the center. Like Yeah,
[00:24:34] Jonathan Clarkson: you are, you're right in the thick of it there.
[00:24:36] Tom Butta: Yeah. I'll say like in, in the hot, in the hotspot, we're going that
far
[00:24:41] Megan Self: back.
[00:24:41] Megan Self: Uh, babysitting. That was my first real job. Right. We're like
[00:24:45] Tom Butta: taking care of others. You all you wanted to say was everything was fine. Right. Like when everything couldn't be, yeah. Or it was at risk of not being. All right. Two other Quest questions. What's the best advice you've ever received in business or for your career, or maybe just even in life?
[00:25:05] Tom Butta: Actually,
[00:25:06] Jonathan Clarkson: for me, it was, uh, the distinction I, I used to work for, um, the guy who was, uh, Mike Rawlings, was the c o at Pizza Hut when I was there, and then he went on to be the mayor of Dallas for a couple of terms. He used to say, There are two types of people in the world. Are you either a simplifier or a complicator?
[00:25:25] Jonathan Clarkson: And that everybody should strive to be a simplifier and we should surround ourselves as simplifiers. And it resonated me with me when he said it, and I've never forgotten it. And I love sharing that with people too, cuz I, I firmly believe in it. I love
[00:25:39] Megan Self: that. Yeah. For me it was just a reminder to, to not take yourself too seriously and to enjoy the ride while you're on it, even if you're working.
[00:25:49] Megan Self: Hard and, and putting all you have into launching something or building something, but just take a minute and ensure that you're having fun and enjoying the moments along the way, not just the victory at the end. Hopefully the victory
[00:26:02] Tom Butta: hit. Yeah, that's great. What's the best advice you've ever given?
[00:26:07] Jonathan Clarkson: It's hard to say cuz I don't know how it was received, but one of the, one of the things that has been sort of a recurrent theme, Around here, given the winter disruption that our customers, uh, endured at the end of December, and just the puts and takes that come with working in the airline industry is you have to have sort of a response centered culture.
[00:26:30] Jonathan Clarkson: Like you have to be sort of ready to act when things that you don't anticipate happening happen. And maybe they're not the most fortuitous thing, they're not the thing you want it to happen, but. You, you gotta have to find yourself in a position to be able to, to act on those. So, and this is an adage I heard from, we've all heard this a bunch of different ways, but the way I learned it was 10% is what happens to you and 90% is how you respond.
[00:26:53] Jonathan Clarkson: So I, I think we hear on our, on our teams, try to create a response centered culture and sort of anticipate when things don't go exactly the way we want them to. And we're always well equipped to, to focus on the response as opposed to focusing on the action. So, so someone
[00:27:10] Tom Butta: said something to me recently, and it was actually my spin instructor.
[00:27:15] Tom Butta: He said something to me, he said, you know, I think about it this way. This isn't something that happened to you. This is something that happened for you, which is why I, I just thought of that, you know, when you talked about this idea of having a response culture, because you can claim to be the victim, right?
[00:27:31] Tom Butta: Oh my God, I can't believe this happened. Or defensive, right? Well, that wasn't my responsibility. Or you can choose to actually use the occasion to do something about it, which means it take some ownership, right? And so it's happening for you, in which case now you're, you're actually responsible. Okay, Megan, I love
[00:27:52] Megan Self: that shift of mindset.
[00:27:54] Megan Self: I'm a big Brene Brown fan, and so thinking about vulnerability and, and. Or getting comfortable, being uncomfortable. So I think the, probably the area of advice that I try to, to deliver to my team members is just bringing their authentic self to work and not worrying about what I think or what JC or Jonathan here thinks, or or whomever it may be, but just truly being themselves all day, every day versus.
[00:28:22] Megan Self: Creating a persona or being someone that they're not quite beat, you know? Cuz you can kind of see through that. And so it's like when you see the moments of you being your authentic self, you shine, bring more of that every day and you'll be far more successful in your career and getting where you wanna be than kind of clouding yourself behind a mask of what you think we want.
[00:28:44] Jonathan Clarkson: Yep. Yeah. That's great. I
[00:28:46] Tom Butta: like that. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I like that as well. And I'm gonna do a yes. And so I would say yes. Yes. And sometimes we don't, we don't have the answers. Right. And so what I often say to people is, don't own the problem by yourself. It's okay. Like, bring others in. People wanna help.
[00:29:08] Tom Butta: Right? They always do intuitively. And, um, had this experience recently with the member of my team and you know, he was kind of straight, he took on a lot and he was struggling and he's a, you know, He's a, he's an A level, he's a performer and it's, you know, he is got broad shoulders and he is like, I, I must figure this out.
[00:29:25] Tom Butta: And I said, it's not up to you to figure it out, but it is up to you to try to get to the end. And the way to do that is let's bring other people in who have a voice in this. And we did. And I tell you, the conversation didn't have to last very long before the whole dynamic changed. So anyway, it was an absolute pleasure talking with the two of you.
[00:29:44] Tom Butta: Thank you so much for your time. Your insights, uh, your experience, your wisdom. And, um, I really appreciate you being on, on the podcast, so thank you very much.
[00:29:55] Jonathan Clarkson: You bet. Thank you for having us time. Yeah. You're welcome. Yes, thank you.
[00:30:02] Producer: Thank you for listening to Masters of Max, a mobile app experience podcast, brought to you by the team at airship. Find out more about how you can help your brand deliver better, more personalized app experiences@airship.com. If you enjoyed today's episode, please take a moment to subscribe and rate the show.