Social Media: How Delta Airlines Loses Business One Customer at a Time

I just had an absurdly Kafka-esque experience with Delta Airlines in Atlanta that involved missed connections, a seeming tour of the bowels of the airport, and some of the worst customer service I've ever experienced in my life.

The irony is that the client I was on my way to meet in Little Rock happens to be a company in the telecommunications business, a sector that by it's nature draws a great deal of customer service inquiries and complaints. One of the main things we helped them do is to set up a dedicated customer service outreach channel on Twitter, something they have taken to eagerly and been using with a great deal of success.

So after hours of runaround in which my colleague and I were directed to multiple sections of the airport because no single Delta employee was empowered to rebook, supply a hotel room (we were lucky to get 20% vouchers and that was after a great deal of argument) or even tell us what our options were (at one point we were directed to speak to someone on a phone bank they had set up) we had missed every single flight we might have been rebooked on either going to Little Rock or simply returning home and now had to stay over in Atlanta.

As someone who works in social media I naturally turned to Twitter - many companies monitor the service for complaints. Several tweets plus some angry Facebook updates (I figured what the hell, why not?) elicited zero response. Nada. Zip. I'm not the only one, check out #deltafail for others.

The real tragedy here is that Delta made a halfhearted attempt to have a Twitter presence at some point here. Note that the most recent entries are a few from June. Before that they are from May. May 2007. To be fair Delta has a more recently updated Twitter stream linked to their blog but it seems to do very little from a customer service perspective.

So, why does this matter beyond the rant of an unhappy customer?

In the new world of social media, Google and other search engines are bringing up Twitter in results more prominently with each revision of their algorithms. A negative blog post like this one, on a site with a powerful presence like the Huffington Post can also rank well and lead to other blogs and posts linking in and out, spreading the story virally. Customer ratings sites are also increasing in prominence and in visitors, which in turn leads to search engines according them more weight on the results page.

Eventually as bad service experiences mount and are recounted online, a brand like Delta begins to have a very hard time shaking their reputation for lousy customer experience. I'll grant that some airlines might view what they do as a commodity - consumers look for the lowest prices above all.

Yet, they use Google and others to do so. For business travelers who are counting pennies does it make sense to go with Delta at the lowest cost ticket knowing that the service could potentially cause you to miss your meeting, or to simply use WebEx or another teleconference service knowing that you'll be on time at little or no cost, even if it's not in person? Customer service counts.

As for Delta, I'm still waiting for a reply to my tweets.

Follow Noah Mallin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/nmallin

Comments

[jnob]

Another unsatisfied customer here. On our familiy's way to Amsterdam, Delta managed to lose all our luggage, forcing us to by several days worth of clothes. The bags finally arrived on the third day, but weren't delivered until the fifth day of our trip. On the way home, the same thing, even though it was a direct flight. Three days later, our bags arrived, opened and a box of Drost shaved chocolate had been opened and put back into the bag - with the result that our clothes were covered in Dutch dark chocolate.

Delta basically said, the rule is no compensation for lost bags on return flights, so they wouldn't even consider compensating us for the loss of the clothes due to their employees' rifling through the candy. They finally gave us two 20% off vouchers for trans-Atlantic flights good for 60 days. I don't know about you, but considering how often I take a European vacation, that was as useful as giving me 20% off on a flight to Pluto.

They are the worst customer service line now in existence. I always try to avoid them if I can help it.

[Noah Mallin - Huffpost Blogger]

I can tell you that yesterday I was contacted by Delta's communications folks, who put me in touch with a customer service coordinator. I suspect this is going to go the free ticket/extra miles route but does that address any of the underlying concerns brought up here? Take a look at this article to see what a proactive online customer service response can do for a company - in this case Comcast:
http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/135282

[JNarragansett]

I'm another unsatisfied Delta customer and I will not fly with them anymore regardless of price because the last two times I flew with them I have been forced to spend hundreds of dollars to make up for their incompetence. First, I was flying directly from NY to South Carolina for a funeral and somehow my bag ended up in Atlanta and was not delivered until after the funeral, for which I had to buy a new suit. Then I flew with Northwest (a division of Delta) and they managed to lose our bag on the way to a wedding. Even though the bag arrived the same night we did, they decided to hold onto it for another day until after the wedding. They weren't finished that trip though and they went on to break our bag on the way home and deny us any compensation. Their customer service motto seems to be: "There is no law that requires us to do that."

[brady61995]

live in cincinnati. drive to indy and dayton to avoid delta, it cost half as much to fly delta from dayton through cincinnati as it does to fly straight from cincinnati. its idiotic. hate delta

[Noah Mallin - Huffpost Blogger]

I can't even imagine what would happen had there been a guitar involved - I suppose I would have had to make a YouTube video too! That's a great example though of how one upset customer can cause a whole lot of trouble online for a big company.

[Andre Lieven]

Reason #42 why I prefer to drive rather than fly. At least driving no one is gonna bump my seat, or book me via Atlanta or Chatanooga­...

[GreatNews27]

Tweet in one hand......­.......

[Cautious]

Good one. I was going to ask if they broke his guitar too, but I think yours might be funnier. Maybe.