Tales abound of passengers, and sometimes employees, misbehaving on flights. The media even publishes an annual survey of the year’s worst travel moments. What you will rarely read, however, is how an airline employee or fellow traveler went above and beyond to help out someone in need. Part 4 of our Stories from the Front Line is below. Hope you enjoy!

A reservations agent in the Dallas office received a frantic call from the wife of a passenger in transit. Her husband was on his way to say farewell to his brother who was in hospice. It was a race against time, and his originating flight had been delayed by several hours due to weather. He was on his way to Cincinnati to catch the flight to Michigan, where his brother lay dying, and he only had four minutes to make the connection. His wife, who had been tracking his flight, called Delta Reservations and begged the agent to do everything possible to help him make his connection. There was not another flight to Michigan until the next day if he missed the flight. The agent made several quick calls to the Cincinnati gate and flight operations, and the last flight to Michigan was held so the passenger could pay his final respects to his brother.

Nancy
Senior Analyst
Customer Care

Earlier this year, an article appeared in The Washington Post by Joe Brancatelli called “How to Complain: Ten tips for getting just compensation when things go awry on the road.” Below is a deeper behind-the-scenes look at each of the areas he mentions (please bear with me, this will be a long post). I’m hopeful it may help you understand how we at Delta handle your concerns.

1. Go for Immediate Gratification

Yes! If you have time before you catch your next flight or leave the airport, ask the airport agent if you can resolve the situation on the spot. Explain to the nearest agent what happened, and how you would like to resolve the problem. Chances are you will be able to come to terms.

2. Take Good Notes

This is also great advice. Employee names, places, dates, boarding passes, and receipts are all helpful in determining where the service failure occurred, so managers can take corrective action with either the employee or a process that may not be working as planned. And rest assured, these complaints do get routed and read by managers here at Delta.

3. Act Fast

Mr. Brancatelli says that the longer you wait, the less chance you have of getting what you want. Don’t wait TOO long to write, since tickets expire and your documentation may get lost and some kinds of complaints – baggage claims for example – have specific deadlines for submitting the claim that you must meet under our contract of carriage, otherwise we can’t accept your claim.

4. Go with Paper

Actually, I disagree with this one. Submitting a concern via email benefits you, because it is more efficient to handle and easier to route to our other departments for follow-up. About one-third of all contacts we receive is hard copy correspondence, which has to be scanned into our customer contact system and routed. We have a faster response time goal on email, because the customer’s expectation is for a quicker reply to an email versus a written letter. I agree with Mr. Brancatelli’s recommendation not to send a handwritten letter. Legibility is a problem with scanned documents, making your letter even more difficult for us to read and respond to.

5. Send the Complaint to a Specific Person

It is the job of Customer Care to respond to these complaints, and our senior executives will just refer your letter to us. We will not take your complaint any more or less seriously.

6. Keep It Short and Polite

This is true. It is easy to get bogged down in the detail when you have to read a lengthy complaint, and we may miss an important point that could weigh in your favor. Shorter is better if possible.

7. Use Your Clout

If you are an elite member or able to sway a corporate travel purchase decision, Mr. Brancatelli recommends that you clearly state that up front. Most of our passengers are wise to this tip and quickly let us know what SkyMiles tier they are in. Our goal is to treat our passengers, status or no status, in the best way possible depending on their individual situation and in accordance with our corporate policy.

8. Ask for Something

The article suggests that you state clearly what type of compensation will make you happy. If the situation warrants, we will give transportation vouchers that can be used towards the purchase of a ticket. All compensation, from Crown Room passes to vouchers is governed by corporate policy, which is tied to the nature of the individual complaint.

So what does Customer Care compensate for? If your concern has not been already addressed at the airport, we will review the complaint and make a determination if compensation is due. The situations where we typically will offer some form of compensation fall generally into two categories: mechanical delays and severe service failures. Both of these are usually within our control, and we try to make the situation right. What constitutes a “severe service failure” is probably the hardest thing to understand, so here are two examples of severe service failures where we would most likely provide compensation.

If you missed a flight because we booked you incorrectly, or we failed to provide the wheelchair assistance you requested and you missed your connection, those are severe service failures. We do not compensate for weather or air traffic delays, which cause a lot of angst with passengers.

Expired travel vouchers are one of the most frequent problems that we see. Many people mistakenly believe that the voucher is valid for one year from the date of travel, not the date it was issued (if you have any transportation credit vouchers in your sock drawer, dig them out and check the expiration date!)

9. Use Your Big Plastic Stick

The article recommends that you dispute your credit card charge, but I’ve seen few instances where this works. If we got you there and back, the transportation you purchased has been delivered. There are instances where we have not delivered on a service that a customer paid for, and when that occurs, we will make it right. This can be a gray area, so here’s an example: If you paid for a First Class seat, and due to a change of equipment, we now only have coach seating to offer you, we would refund the difference between the two fares and apologize for your inconvenience.

10. Don’t Give Up

Unless we made a mistake on the initial review of your complaint the decision in most cases stands.

So that in a nutshell is how to negotiate the land of Delta Customer Care. I hope that the only correspondence I will ever see from you is kudos for the wonderful service the Delta team delivers.

Was this information helpful to you? Do you have any tips to add?

Happy Travels!

Nancy
Senior Analyst
Customer Care

Tales abound of passengers, and sometimes employees, misbehaving on flights. The media even publishes an annual survey of the year’s worst travel moments. What you will rarely read, however, is how an airline employee or fellow traveler went above and beyond to help out someone in need. Part 1 of our Stories from the Front Line is below. Hope you enjoy!

A family of five traveling on a Delta flight from JFK to Shannon Ireland, discovered just before takeoff that they had lost their passports and $4,000 in cash. Crew, gate agents, and passengers all pitched in to search the plane and gate area, with no success in finding the missing documents and cash. Unfortunately the family had to be escorted off the plane, since they would not be able to clear immigration in Ireland without passports. To tide them over until they could return to Shannon, the passengers and crew took up a collection and presented the family with $1,600.

Nancy
Senior Analyst
Customer Care