Paging Delta Air Lines, paging Delta Air Lines . . .
According to this feature from the New York Times — which focuses on the widening gap in services between coach and higher-cost airline tickets — Delta is making a priority out of better care for its coach passengers:
. . . The airlines do acknowledge that while their finances have improved, they must do a better job of convincing the average traveler that they understand that these savings have come at a cost to the customer experience. . . .
Some passengers seem to feel that the airlines should just acknowledge that the flying experience is no longer a glamorous or, at times, even tolerable one — especially back in coach — and that it’s something passengers are going to have to accept. . . .
But I note that Delta still hasn’t responded to the temperate but pointed criticism of Jeremiah Owyang, who called them out last week for faults in their service. (We talked about Jeremiah’s post last week.) Yes, it’s been a busy traveling time, but surely there’s some VP or flack within Delta who could have spared five minutes to drop him a line by now. Right? Right?
This isn’t about demonizing Delta per se; my uncle worked there for 30+ years and loved it. But at this point I’ve become fascinated to see how long it takes them to respond to this highly publicized complaint — if, indeed, they ever do.
Category: Transportation
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Still haven’t heard from them, comments or in email.
I’m easy to find my email is jeremiah_owyang at yahoo.com
I suspect the channels in which it has been publicized are channels that no one at Delta tracks. Tools and services designed for monitoring public opinion and traditional PR channnels do a poor job of monitoring blogs and social media. It may be that their PR staff and agency are strong in traditional media but oblivious to new media.
If a company is lucky - and doesn’t take the ridiculous step of locking down Internet access to avoid employees “wasting” time - a few employees will take the initiative to wade into the social media maelstrom and monitor it first-hand. (That sound is me and Tim patting ourselves on the back). Otherwise the company has a very big blind spot, and that’s what is happening here.
Jeremiah — You’re ridiculously visible and easy to reach for anyone paying attention (I mean that in the best possible way), but as Russ rightly notes, Delta simply isn’t paying attention.
What’s painful to me is that so many “old-line” companies with a huge customer-facing business somehow choose not to engage with modern social media, as though blogs and everything else just don’t exist. Your posting about Delta’s bad service on your blog is not unlike putting that complaint on a sign for everyone to see outside the St. Louis airport. Yeah, it’s not the very *biggest* airport in the country, but, uh, would Delta want a bunch of its customers to see that kind of complaint on a billboard? Without a rebuttal? Without an assertion of “Hang on a minute, it’s clear we screwed up something here, but our heart’s in the right place, let us fix it”? And yet, in this case, that’s exactly what they’re doing.