Southwest cuts ad spending as customers move away from X

Southwest has slashed its advertising dollars on X as the carrier increasingly interacts with customers outside of social media. “Our spend is down significantly,” Chief Executive Officer Bob Jordan said Wednesday in an interview, adding that the pullback extends to other platforms besides X. “We are in the middle of evaluating that right now.” The shift is noteworthy for an industry that has long communicated with passengers — satisfied or otherwise — through social media. Airline customers have used X, the Elon Musk-owned site formerly known as Twitter, to voice complaints about travel issues or other problems and gain the attention of customer service workers monitoring social media feedback. Southwest now sees its customers interacting differently with the carrier. Southwest has been increasing digital communications with customers through texts and new capabilities on its mobile app, and is continuing work on tools to allow passengers to resolve more issues themselves on personal devices. “We still have some of our customer relations folks focused to make sure we get to those customers,” Whitney Eichinger, Southwest’s chief communications officer, said of X. “But I think we are seeing fewer comments on X from customers as I see more and more folks just kind of deviate from the platform.” A representative for the social-media platform didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.<br/>