In a recent post I said that I would buy into Delta Airlines’ hyped new customer experience improvements for one trial run. If they delivered a superior experience, as promised, then great. If not then I’d know it was all branding hype.
Well Bruce Nussbaum has done the legwork for me. He went on a a Delta flight. It is was, by the sounds of it, a debacle.
Problem is, I flew on the first day of Delta’s emergence from bankruptcy and it was a nightmare. I came up from Mexico City, where a computer failure forced the passengers to wait on the plane for an extra hour–or was it two? When I arrived at JFK in New York, Delta blithely told the passengers that 96 bags had not been put on the plane because of “rebalancing” issues. Now what does that mean? That’s more than half the people on that flight.
They would arrive the next day, Delta promised. My bag didn’t arrive for three days.
Several things to draw from this.
- When people are unhappy they tell their friends and that damages your brand broadly, swiftly. And giving a blogger a bad user experience – ouch! (How a corporation recovers from negative blogging is an interesting topic.)
- The sign of a truly customer orientated company is how well they patch the service when things go wrong. If there’s a computer failure at air traffic control, that’s beyond Delta’s control. But how they make that experience bearable for their customers is very much within their control. Free drinks and nuts, fun movies, regular updates… these things can bring passengers on side.
Bruce Nussbaum’s experience was a lemon – a consistent failure. They left him sitting on the tarmac and didn’t seem to care. They lost bags and didn’t give a damn. And Now Bruce Nussbaum, with a large readership, is giving them negative press and as I write, Delta have not done anything to respond.
I expect that Delta travellers will probably find lemons on the menu regularly. I’ll go looking for some sweeter experiences.