Take My Money, Please... They Kept Saying NO!
That’s right, I wanted to GIVE more money to a company and was repeatedly told NO, you can’t, that’s not possible. Wait, what?! I know, confusing, right?
Shocker: Airlines get lots of things wrong these days.
From the way they load and board planes, to the crappy bags of snacks that replaced real food years ago, the experience of flying seems to be getting worse instead of better.
And in this case, the one thing they have the most control over is something this airline got terribly wrong.
My business partner and I were headed to New York. As I checked in with the Delta app the night before our flight, I noticed that there were several first class seats available. It was a long, direct flight so I decided to splurge and upgrade our seats so that we would arrive refreshed and ready to do business.
No matter what I did in the app, it seemed impossible for me to do the ticket upgrade myself. Unfazed by this, I decided to make a quick call to the customer service line to upgrade over the phone. As soon as I heard the recording, I realized my folly in assuming I could make “a quick call to the customer service line.”
We value your business but hold times are longer than expected.
At this point I was feeling calm and patient, but had to get my daughter to soccer practice. This call would have to wait until later in the evening.
A few hours later, I was able to talk to a real person! And, problem solved. Blog over. (If only!)
I was told that I would have to do the upgrade at the customer service desk or gate when I arrived at the airport, as they couldn’t upgrade my tickets over the phone.
This seemed odd to me, but I didn’t argue. There were still three available seats when I went to bed. Still feeling quite zen about the whole thing, I figured if the seats were available when I checked in at the airport then the upgrade was meant to be.
We were on the first flight to New York that day. (In my opinion, when you’re going west to east, you want to be on the earliest possible flight to the East Coast. You get to town in the early afternoon which means you can squeeze in a quick afternoon meeting along with a business dinner. )
There was no traffic that morning and we arrived at the gate a full 45 minutes before boarding. I was greeted by a smiling, fresh-faced employee. I told her I wanted to upgrade two tickets to first class and showed her on my phone how the app was giving me the option to upgrade the tickets, but I couldn’t finish the purchase.
That’s when I discovered just how little Delta cares about their customers.
(Not this actual employee, she was lovely. But she was put in a very awkward position in explaining all of this to me.)
Like probably 90 percent of flyers, I chose the least expensive ticket option. I fly frequently, and I shop with two things in mind: schedule and price. I’m not particularly brand loyal when it comes to airlines and so I fly with a lot of different airlines every year.
Our very kind gate agent told us that if we wanted to sit in first class, we’d need to buy two (new) full-fare first class tickets.
It turns out the ticket I purchased wasn’t eligible to upgrade. I could keep my seat or buy a new ticket for first class, but paying the upgrade fee was not an option.
Which means Delta was turning down revenue generated by an impulse buy. Retail stores thrive on the impulse buys placed at checkout lines, but Delta has structured their tickets in such a way that they are turning down a purchase.
I see two key problems with this policy:
From a purely tactical viewpoint: an airline’s inventory expires when the flight takes off. You can never get back the lost revenue from an empty seat.
Telling 90% of customers that they are terrible people for choosing the best price option (whether implicitly or explicitly) doesn’t strike me as a good long-term brand-building strategy.
Perhaps I’m being a bit harsh, but it felt to me like class systems are alive and well in the airline industry, and if you dare to purchase the cheap seats…well, good luck being treated like a paying customer.
I pleaded with the employee to use her logical thinking and accept the additional money I was offering to no avail. No matter how much waved my Delta/AMEX card in front of her (I have had a Delta Amex card since 1987) she refused to take my money. My money wasn’t good enough for her (well, the company anyway.)
There were still three first-class seats open and at this point one of two things was going to happen: they’d stay empty during the flight, or up to three lucky passengers would get a free upgrade. Either way, Delta wouldn’t get any revenue for these seats. Does that even make sense?
I returned to our seats at the gate. With just five minutes until boarding would begin, I called the toll-free customer service number (at least THAT didn’t cost me anything).
I told another very pleasant customer service rep that we were about to board, there were still three first class seats available and I was willing to pay to upgrade for two of them.
And yet, they would have none of this nonsense! How dare I…a low-class, cheap-seat buying passenger…attempt to buy my way into first class?! (What is this the Titanic? I didn’t buy a steerage ticket because I had to, I bought the cheapest ticket because what was the point of paying more for the same seat on the same flight?!)
Suffice it to say, that there is something very broken in the customer service model at Delta Air Lines.
I don’t know about you, but in my business when a customer says they want to spend money with us we generally don’t tell them ‘no’ or that they’re not good enough to use our service. (We have been honest with customers about when we might not be a good fit, so they can make an educated decision, but that’s a different situation altogether.) But that’s exactly what it felt like I was hearing from Delta. Are they a premium luxury brand that would rather incinerate unsold inventory than take the money of some blue-collar aspiring fashionistas? (Yes, some high-fashion brands actually do this.) Do they really make enough money that they can afford to turn away customers who want to spend more money with them? Especially on inventory that’s about to expire?
I wish I had that problem in my business, don’t you?
It turns out that Delta does this for a few reasons.
The first reason is a cash grab. When you purchase the lowlife, scum seats, you are buying up 80% of the available seats on the plane. Oh wait…that means that your cheapest customer is your best customer. Confusing, isn’t it?
The second reason is more insidious. They want you to feel bad for buying the cheap seats. Yes, they want you to learn from your mistake and penalize you for making such a poor purchase decision. They’re training you to buy higher-priced seats by rubbing your nose in a mistake.
This flies in the face of Delta’s own policies where they state: “Serving customers is the reason we are in business” and “a key element of operational excellence is putting the customer first.” Read more about their policy here.
Why on earth would you punish the majority of your paying customers, the customers who fill those planes daily? That’s a good question, and one I can’t answer. but it got me thinking about the way we treat our clients in my business.
Yes, in my business the “cheapest” clients only spend $50 with us. Should I follow Delta’s example and start treating them like crap? No! Because the customers that buy the cheap seats today (in our case a single $50 ad) are tomorrow’s monthly recurring clients. They’re the clients who not only help the business grow but get the most value out of the service we provide. Perhaps Delta should learn a little bit about customer service and nurturing relationships. It might help them stay airborne just a few more years.
Oh, and by the way, there are other businesses with similar models that are handling this EXACT problem with far more grace. Take a professional sporting event: buy a ticket to a hockey game in the nosebleeds and you might get a text when you arrive (or even during the first period) that you can upgrade to third-row, center ice seats RIGHT NOW for a fraction of the original cost in a few simple steps. There’s no guarantee you’ll have the opportunity, but they’d rather see people in great seats having a fantastic experience than see top-tier seats go empty because no one paid full retail price when they went on sale six months ago.
Next time you think about your lowest value customers, remember: they are the ones with the most room to GROW in value…which means they might be your highest value clients if you give them the respect every single client deserves.