Delta Invests $2B in Customer Experience, Yet Complaints Rise
Delta Airlines (NYSE: DAL) has introduced new products and services for business travelers as part of a more than $2 billion investment in the customer experience, according to an advertisement in the August issue of Business Travel News.
Download Delta touts customer experience improvements yet complaints increase
Enhancements include:
- New mobile apps for reservations, baggage, and even for finding one’s car
- In-flight wi-fi
- 8,100+ new power outlets at recharging stations in US airports
- Flat-bed seats in First Class
- New Economy Comfort class (+4 inches of legroom, +50% more recline)
- New and upgraded Sky Clubs
Why Are The Numbers Still Down?
It all sounds great. So, why aren’t Delta’s customers jumping for joy? Why are customer satisfaction scores lagging? In fact, Delta’s scores have plummeted to the lowest position among major domestic carriers in just the last year.
On the inside, Delta doesn’t score very high either. Take a look at GlassDoor.com’s public employee blog. This is a website where employees can share their thoughts in public and, sometimes, vent. Delta’s front-line employees who contribute here seem to know just what to do. Unfortunately, Delta’s management doesn’t seem to be listening hard or long enough. As a result, customers rate Delta at or below the middle of the pack. Even customers who offered high rankings on particular flights complain about issues with almost every flight.
What Are The Reasons?
One answer may be that Delta is organized to fly planes–not passengers. And to do so efficiently for shareholders through operational excellence without much regard for the customer experience or for the cost those operationally minded decisions create for their customers. Think about it. Aren’t most of the complaints you’ve experienced personally and read about on-line are about little things around convenience and big things like keeping promises? If Delta would get clear on its promises to passengers, employees, and stakeholders (in addition to its already excellent safety promise), it would be easier to make decisions that positively affect operations, profit, and the customer/employee experiences at the same time.
Another answer may be that Delta desires loyalty but doesn’t offer loyalty in return. By definition, loyalty is a long-term measure of a customer’s willingness to continue to do business with you (even when you make a mistake). Delta’s policies around perks, comfort, and convenience are geared to the ticket a passenger holds in his hand on a given day–not the 50- or 500-ticket or 20-year relationship he or she has with the company. Shareholders may want Delta to operate in an operationally efficient way, but their customers want to be treated with honor and respect. By focusing on transactions instead of people, Delta sacrifices the opportunity to honor its most valuable asset–its customers–and to provide the kind of experience they will appreciate and share with their friends and colleagues. Delta, like many other brands that feel they offer a commodity service, should remember that you can’t buy loyalty with points. You have to earn it with a superior experience.
What Should Delta Do?
In my humble opinion, Delta should:
- Listen more to front-line employees and respond by doing what’s necessary to make doing their jobs easier
- Clearly restate your promise as a brand to customers, employees, and shareholders
- Raise the volume knob on the voice of the customer when it comes to service design
- Take the impact on customers into account when making operationally-advantageous decisions (save on behalf of everyone, not just Delta)
- Pay attention to the ‘little things’ that make flying more fun and less dehumanizing and tiresome
Those were the big picture recommendations. Specifically, I believe Delta should:
- Invest in service design as a new core competency
- Create an experience lab to prototype adjustments to the passenger/traveler experience prior to going systemwide with new ideas
- Employ mid-experience smartphone surveys to learn about problems while they are happening
- Empower front-line staff with greater authority to correct service problems in front of customers in real time
- Return to the use of employee ‘exchange programs’ to share learnings across silos
- Provide more internal information on flight status and access to rebooking options
- Stop surprising customers with less service at higher cost (changes are OK, just communicate it first)
What Do You Think?
Please post your thoughts below.
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Airlines are essentially gigantic distributed networks. Like a retailer, you never interact with corporate, but the impact of one person can be a great — or terrible expression. Too often you have great employees handicapped by bad systems, lack of access, etc.
Unfortunately airline reputation is much more about how they don’t fail during a crises [weather, broken plane, etc] than how they innovate. So if an employee can’t act to “do the right thing”, it’s all bad.
A few features may help set them apart when people are comparing ticket options but as you also said, loyalty is not something you can ask for… it has to be cultivated with every experience and as a fairly frequent flier, for Delta to bolt in a few options is just not enough.
Delta’s on-time arrival percentage is very low compared to other airlines. They have large windows for their trips so that they can be “on-time”, but they never depart at the scheduled time. I am gold and fly out of Atlanta. It doesn’t matter what airport I return from, they are always late (maybe 1 in every 20 flights are they on time) and they often cancel in small airports (partners are terrible). I do like the destinations they offer and Airtran has forced them to stay price competitive.
I fly almost every week. If at all possible I avoid Delta for all the reasons your other posters list. As much as anything, it’s about the attitude of the employees, who by and large have a take it or leave it regard for their customers. Their accommodation when they are late is terrible. I fly American when I can then Southwest second. American treats its loyal customers well, and make you feel like they care. Southwest is just a good time, even though, in truth, they screw up almost as bad as Delta, you feel like they are concerned and want to help you get where you’re going. Jet Blue is also very good, but with limited destinations.
This is a great post. I cannot remember the last time I had a pleasant experience with Delta. The last trip I took with them was absolutely horrible. There was no customer service from the time we made the reservation until the time they attempted to follow-up with my rantings and ravings on Twitter.
I think you hit the nail on the head – they do not offer loyalty. Customer service at Delta is lip service. It’s not sincere and everyone knows it.
“Delta is organized to fly planes–not passengers” says it all. Nice post.
Great post Mike.
I believe most of your comments would apply to just about any airline in the world – and most industries in general.
Start with the customer ALWAYS and watch and listen before asking questions or innovating.
It really is that simple – and also that difficult to do when the pressure is on and everyone wants action!
Delta’s new flat first-class seats are hard as a rock. A woman in the seat behind me on a trip to West Africa actually brought a blow-up pool raft to put on her seat. I wish I had. I could have slept on the floor more comfortably than on that seat. It seems like for everything Delta tries to do right, they’ll trade off with some other issue.
I recently flew out of New Orleans and found the penalty of getting in the elite traveler line going through security there was 100 percent of passengers in that line getting funneled through the body scanner. I was one unhappy camper.
They could do worse than to model Southwest. But since that’s not going to happen… They need a way to keep their employees aligned and empower them to make a difference in peoples experience.
One of the ways to do that is to have a mission statement and a set of that employees can use as a compass. When trying to solve an issue for a customer, they compare possible choices with the direction the mission statement is pointing them in. It’s one way of distributing the power to make good decisions for the customer. Push it out to the edge.
The people who deal with customers everyday know what customers want and need, they are also in the best position to take care of customers. If they included these folks in deciding where the 2 billion was spent, they’d have engaged front line employees and happy customers by now.
It doesn’t matter how much money a company spends on customer service if they are running things with a top down, command and control mindset. Modern business practices suggest that a more distributed model that takes advantage of massive processing power of your employees is much more efficient than letting a few people at the top dictate what will happen.
In short, Delta needs to go through a huge culture change. One that involves and engages it’s employees and engenders trust at all levels.