Other airlines rely on social media these days to handle complaints, but few employ e-connections as seemingly successfully as Southwest Airlines, the largest domestic carrier in the United States.

The airline sports a Social Care Team, whose job it is to take care of complaints, acknowledge compliments and, when the occasion calls for it, crack a joke to lighten the mood.

We don’t know if all this contributes to Southwest’s second place ranking as the least-complained about carrier in the country during 2014 according to United States Department of Transportation statistics, but it can’t hurt.

Consider, according to DOT statistics the airline boarded 135,769,098 passengers last year, second most among all U.S. carriers. It received 714 complaints, or 0.53 per 100,000 boardings. By contrast, United Airlines boarded 90,520,319 folks according to DOT and got 2,452 gripes. That translates into 2.71 complaints for every 100,000 passengers.

The average number of complaints for the dozen U.S. airlines DOT ranks was 2.71 per 100,000 passengers.

Tweet, tweet

Nothing galls a flyer more than being ignored. Southwest’s Social Care Team tries to make sure that doesn’t happen often. It strips away layers of bureaucracy and gets down to business fast. “The Team can handle virtually any inquiry without having to escalate [the issue to higher-ups] or direct the Customer to another channel or department for service,” says Southwest spokeswoman Melissa Ford in written response to AirlineRatings.com.

Seven days a week the Social Care Team toils and Tweets. A couple of examples are illustrative:

- When summer weather raised passenger hackles and played havoc on airline schedules along the East Coast of the U.S. the rock band The Fray found themselves delayed aboard Flight 176. The band Tweeted “@SouthwestAir owes us a drink.” A member of the Social Care Team got back to them, saying, “So sorry to delay you guys. Looks like Mother Nature is going to be nice and you should be your way soon.”

The Social Care representative worked with Southwest’s Proactive Customer Service Team to make up for the band’s delay by issuing, via e-mail, what the airline calls a ‘LUV Voucher,’ good for passage on a future Southwest flight.

- After arriving late in St. Louis because of a delay Hadas Gold Tweeted Southwest, “Dear @SouthwestAir please hold the plane from St. Louis to Phoenix so we can make it home.” She offered “to bake the whole plane pies if you hold flight 351 for 10 extra min.”

The Social Care Team worked with the airline’s Network Operations Control center. NOC responded, getting right back to the flight: “PLZ MAKE ANNOUNCEMENT: THE STL-PHX FLIGHT WILL HOLD – AND SAY YOU EXPECT THE PIES TO BE KEY LIME.”

The message mirrors the airline’s attitude: it takes its job seriously, but not necessarily itself. No word on how many pies produced. 

In short, Southwest spends a lot of time and effort attempting to nip problems in the bud, before they have a chance to blossom into a full-blown complaints.

Traditional channels

While Southwest leans heavily on social media to mediate passenger problems, there are other channels as well. During business hours you can contact the carrier’s Customer Relations Department at 214-932-0333. E-mail contact can be had at www.southwest.com/contact _us.

Finally there’s traditional snail mail. The address is Southwest Airlines, PO Box 36647-1CR, Dallas, Texas 75235.