Due to my frequent flights in and out of Atlanta, I have become a loyal Delta customer—with a status to show for it. While I generally think they offer a good flying experience, there have been a couple of instances where their efforts to provide a quality personalized service actually diminished my flying experience.
Don’t get me wrong, I always appreciate when I get upgraded to first class. Who wouldn’t? You get all sorts of perks—extra legroom, extra seating area, extra recline, and extra drinks and food. But there is one aspect I must complain about: how Delta treats my jacket. When you fly first-class, the flight attendants take your coat and hang it in a locker to allow you to sit in comfort without having to drape it all over your seat.
Multiple times, I have laid my coat on the seat back, only to find it has been taken away by the highly efficient first class flight attendants. Now, you might be wondering, What kind of goober is he to be complaining about that? To clarify, it’s not having it taken away that I object to; it’s giving it back. This tends to happen within the last 15 to 20 minutes of the flight and, regardless of what I am attempting to do—read, work on my computer, whatever—it suddenly becomes more difficult to do with a jacket.
The proper place for my jacket, in my opinion, is on top of my travel case in the overhead bin, nicely folded. With it completely out of the way the entire duration of the flight, I can easily finish whatever I am working on. All I then have to do once the plane lands and arrives at the gate is retrieve my jacket at the precise moment I am ready to put it on.
Here is the ultimate self-service: retrieving and putting on my jacket at a time and place convenient for me. I understand that the flight attendants have more important things to do as the flight is landing than to tussle with me as I try to hold on to my coat. Do they get a bonus for how many coats they hang up? Whenever I tell them I am putting it in the overhead bin, the typical response is a look that shouts, “Why are you taking up a seat in my first class?” Please, just let me choose what is a great service for me.
Here is my second self-service beef with Delta: making a reservation. Due to the amount I fly, I have a lot of experience with various ways airlines do reservations. On Delta’s website, once you have chosen your place of departure and your destination, you can choose your seat “experience”: Basic, Main, Comfort +, or First Class. Basic is essentially rowing; you get very little control over your flight and should just be happy you are actually in the airplane cabin. Main is all those seats in the back where all airlines have reduced the row spacing in an inverse proportion to how fat we have grown as a society. Comfort + is situated behind first class and has what I would call “normal” row placement. If you use a computer like I do, Comfort + is literally a requirement if you want to get any work done. And finally, there’s First Class.
I mostly fly Comfort +, but there are certain flights where Comfort + is not the optimal seat. On the Delta website, you don’t get to choose which segments have Comfort + selected. For example, I fly between Oklahoma City and Valdosta quite frequently, and this involves a commuter flight between Atlanta and Valdosta and vice versa. On that flight, Row 1 is Comfort +, so if I want Comfort + between OKC and ATL, I have no choice but to sit in Row 1 on the Valdosta segments too. If I try to book Row 8 (the emergency exit row which meets my row spacing preference) on the ATL to VLD segment, the website tells me I have chosen the Comfort + experience and cannot have the seat! Are you kidding me? Why should Delta care if I want an available seat on Row 8? Similarly, if I choose the Comfort + experience and all four seats in Row 1 of the VLD leg are already taken, I am out of luck for any other Comfort + seats for that trip. This, in my opinion, is silly. Just let me choose the experience I want! I can’t think of another airline that gives me less choice in my flying experience.
Because I also fly to Houston Hobby frequently, I opt to use Southwest on my OKC to HOU flights. Let me tell you this, their reservation system rocks! I have the freedom to choose each segment separately and decide what upgrades I want on each.
The world is changing, and with it, the ability to customize our experience, particularly online. Regardless of whether it’s travel, entertainment, or shopping, we get to make the experience tailored to just what is great for each of us. When online systems limit choices, it can really only be for one of two reasons: they are poorly designed, or they have figured out they can actually get more share of wallet if they limit the ability to customize. I don’t understand both of these, especially as it relates to Delta. After all, they have constantly won awards for customer service and are generally recognized as a great company to work for. So I cannot imagine either of these reasons being applicable to them.
If anyone reading this happens to work for Delta, please call me and explain why the web reservations have to be this way. My cell number is 229-630-1000.
In the meantime, what is your online experience like? Are you allowing customers to choose how they want to interact? Do you follow up when you are given feedback to learn how you could make your online experience more self-service friendly? Never assume you have it right; reach out and poll users to get feedback.
Now, if only I could fly Delta using Southwest’s reservation system.