Example How Not to Do Customer Service Online or Off

[jstoddard]

My daughter just tried to book a plane ticket to go see her boyfriend over July 4. He's in Tallahassee. She went to Delta.com (pretty much the only game in town flying out of the Elmira regional airport) . Long story short, the transaction didn't go through... so instead of stopping, she tried again ... several times - and still didn't have a ticket.

What she did have was a hold for over $2000 on her boyfriend's debit card... every time she tried the bank put another $350 hold on the account even though Delta was not charging her.

This is where the bad customer service part comes in....

I called every listed Delta phone number I could find - from my Gold travel partner hotline to the number that was on their website -- same thing.

"Due to higher than expected call volume, we cannot take your call. Please try again later or go to Delta.com. CLICK " Half a dozen numbers - toll and toll-free - same voice message - same CLICK.

After about half an hour of this nonsense I found a number that was for the website - called that and did get a human - who, before I had a chance to say what I was calling about - sent me back on hold to her "Supervisor"

Twenty two minutes later - the "Supervisor" picked up... from Bangladesh or there abouts. She was able to tell me that daughter had not actually purchased a ticket, but had tried seven times. The hold on the account ? Sorry - you'll have to call your bank about that. Then call us back with the name of the person you spoke to and their FAX NUMBER.

Huh?

Uh yeah - all of us have a couple more hours to burn doing that. Cost of the $350 plane ticket is already up over a grand if you figure the time we had to waste.

Maybe technology is making us more stupid - or at least our corporations - because that whole customer service workflow, including the seamless VoIP to India that worked really great but was really worthless to me -- is about the dumbest way to treat a paying customer I can imagine.

JLS

[philthegreek]

What you needed was a negotiator. I'll send Bill Shatner right over with his buddy Big Deal ;-)


phil

[VTNorm]

Delta is the worst. A few years ago I cashed in all my Delta miles to fly the family to Bermuda for a week had to talk to a Delta agent on the phone and he mailed me paper tickets. 6 of us get to the airport and are told they can't match the paper tix to anything in the computer...the resort was already paid for and we had the scheduled time off from work, I had to cough up $3k for 6 more tickets at the gate (thankfully they had enough seats). It then took over 2 months to get it straightened out - they couldn't find my miles. They had my account and they could see that the miles had 'disappeared' but there was no record of the transaction. It took letters and constant badgering up to the CEO's office and never an apology, recognition of the mistake, nothing. It was all focused on what I must have done wrong, they tried to get me take a $3k credit in Delta flights but no way I was doing that. One day a check for $3k showed up with no cover letter or explanation.

I've never flown Delta again. The worst, most arrogant institution I've ever dealt with.

-Norm

[jstoddard]

Years ago, Delta was a great airline. I flew them for years pre-Internet.

My point of posting this is in response to "Technology Making us Stupid" . I don't think it's making us stupid as individuals, but here's an example where it definitely is driving a wedge between a company and its customers.

That's no good.

Especially when they are consolidating other carriers (the only reason we're flying Delta now is that they purchased Northwest, which was, at the time of the sale, the most pleasant US airline to fly IMO.... not anymore. Just like the USAir-America West merger ruined a great organization (America West) - the Delta-NWA merger is a giant negative for Northwest passengers IMO.

How stupid is it for an international company not to at least TRY to answer their damned reservation telephones ? If they could patch me to India instantly in one case, why not in another? I don't like talking to India but it's way better than "We can't answer the phone - call back later -CLICK"

If that's how they handle the front-end... how do they do with maintenance of their planes? Training their pilots? It doesn't really matter because perception is reality. If I think they suck - they suck, and I'm going to take my dollars somewhere else. Of course being "indispensable" to the economy there would probably be a government (taxpayer) bail-out waiting for them.

Builders/Remodelers who don't take care of customers aren't so fortunate. No bail-out, just another competitor waiting in the wings.
JLS

[Ted S.]

I just flew to Tallahassee. There is no easy way to get there, I went from Boston to Miami back up to Tallahassee. I did see that Delta flew there, but I fly American, if it's not too late check them out. I have much better luck with them than anyone else.

[VTNorm]

In my case, Joe, they didn't use the technology they had. I couldn't use my original miles and book online because I was booking tix for 6 people - had to call their reservation desk. In trying to resolve the problem after the trip I couldn't open a case online/email - had to talk to a customer service rep and then write a letter to the person/dept they directed me to. That person would either call or email me to which I'd respond and then the letter cycle would begin again. Despite having the online/web processes they forced me into using the phone which introduced human error and extended the time cycle by weeks & weeks.
It seemed the whole process was designed to make using miles very difficult if not impossible and in the event of a problem beat you down and hope you took the travel credit instead of the cash back.

Funny your comments on US Air. After dumping Delta I switched to US Air and they were great to me. I was doing a ton of business travel and they bent over backwards.

-Norm

[TSJHD1]

Hi...,

You had given a very elaborated information. The specifications you have given is really interested and easy to understand.
Thanks for sharing such a nice information.

What the hell was that all about?
One and only post, then some link in their sig that I'm bettin you surely don't want to be clickin on!

Tom

[jstoddard]

I was 'gold' or chairman's " on USAir for years and I dropped them cold turkey and started flying Northwest everywhere - why ? Because flying through the Philadelphia airport got to be literally unbearable. They batted 1000 .... 100% of flights I took in 2004-5 through Philly were screwed up in some way. It got to the point where I was dragging in there at 8-9 pm on my way back to Elmira-Corning from a client somewhere.. and more than half the time I'd have to bail on the last leg of the flight, rent a car, and drive the 5 hours back to the Elmira airport... turn in the car and drive another hour home - get home at 4 am.

The terminals were always packed with unhappy travelers, surly and belligerent employees who hated life - it sucked. I have too many USAir horror-stories to bore you with here but trust me - how they ran their airline was insanity . The problems started at the very top and poisoned everyone down the line. Hard to tell what was worse, the airport, the airline, or the combo. I used to fly quite a bit through National (Reagan) in DC... another USAir commuter stronghold, and it wasn't much better.

- Piles of bags sitting on the tarmac as the plane taxis back.... baggage handlers right there watching it happen.. don't give a crap..

- Flight attendants unwilling to ask pilot to radio ahead if flight is late... everyone on board misses their connection as a result (Northwest would have radioed the tower and they would have phoned the gates to hold the connections a few minutes so people could get home)

- Commuter flights stuck with the baggage door unlocked... the guy with the key is on break and refuses to come back so the flight can go....

- They'd purposely keep passengers in the dark.. mechanical problem so they knew the flight had to scrub, but they'd keep "delayed" on the board until after midnight on-purpose so they didn't have to issue vouchers or re-book people...

-- I lost count of the number of times we were stuck 2-3 hours on the tarmac And never any reliable information why. Just sitting there in a 90 degree commuter plane, packed in like sardines for a couple of hours in a flying petri dish with people coughing and sneezing.... Sometimes we'd go... sometimes we'd go back to the gate and never go anywhere. No apology, no reason, no nothing. We'd all run to customer service to re-book, only to find out there were 300 people in line trying to do the same thing... and ONE AGENT on duty, moving like a snail.

I could go on forever but I won't. I finally just gave up and stopped flying USair. It's by far the worst airline I've ever had to deal with. And Philly is the worst airport. It was the perfect storm of terrible. Ditching them was like a huge weight taken off.

Put it this way... Philadelphia lobbied to get Southwest in their airport for years. They finally made a deal but after less than one year of operation -- they were threatening to pull out because the union employees could not even come close to their turn-around or customer service standards. They wound up staying and I don't know the resolution but Philly had to make a lot of concessions to keep them.

Northwest via Detroit ... my other close "hub" airport... total opposite. The airport was (and still is, although Delta hasn't helped) spotlessly clean... ruthlessly efficient. Night and day difference in how the whole thing operates. Night and day difference in the attitude of the employees that you can literally feel. I may have been delayed once or twice in Detroit, but it was during a blizzard or something. The rest of Detroit needs to take a couple lessons from the airport .

JLS

[jstoddard]

Tom
It's call "spamdexing" Spammers target unrestricted message boards like this one - the idea is the link will look "legit" to Google and will therefore raise the visibility of their website in search results. A very high percentage of your SEO with Google is how you're linked on other sites. They've figured out they can make generic "great info" posts and make it past most moderators.

The site they're linked to might be legit - or it might be sitting there waiting to snare you as part of a bot-net, or anything in-between. You're smart not to go there.
JLS

[Otis P. Driftwood]

My wife flew on DELTA last month out of Boston. On the return trip, they managed to misplace her luggage. On 2 occasions (and driving to/from Boston) they called to say they found the luggage, only when we arrived there, it was nowhere to be found. On the 3rd trip to Boston (110 miles round trip by car) they found the luggage. When I remarked to the luggage person that the luggage was needed, he snapped "oh my, oh dear, how does it feel to want?".

Customer Service these days has become extinct...