Chris Matyszczyk
for Technically Incorrect
| October 16, 2021
| Topic: Enterprise Software
Sometimes, only humans can do the job.
Screenshot by ZDNet
It’s a world of good cheer for Delta Air Lines.
The airline actually made a profit in the third quarter. Its employees are getting vaccinated without (exactly) being told to. It believes business travel will fully return in 2022.
It’s not a good time, then, to be annoying the living daylights out of your customers. Especially some of your most loyal, uplifted customers who travel regularly. You know, the rich and business sorts.
Yet here’s Delta becoming something of a joke, of the slightly bitter kind.
You see, the airline resorted to technology to solve something that, may I desperately suggest, technology may not easily solve: customer service.
Rethinking customer service: No longer the weakest link in the customer’s journey
As the pandemic performed its worst across the world, as flights were being cancelled, rescheduled and cancelled again, Delta added what it called “a new phone platform.”
This, said Delta in July, “automatically equips our agents with even more details about your travel, so they can address your questions efficiently and get you on your way.”
I can hear you automatically equipping yourself with wonder as to how it’s all going. Well, reports suggest that it isn’t going swimmingly. Because no automated phone system ever goes swimmingly, does it?
Within seconds, your shoulders tense and your mouth whispers expletives. Within seconds, you realize that the whole purpose of the phone system is to discourage from believing you’ll ever get to talk to a human being. Or ever get an answer to your problem.
With Delta’s new phone system, it appears its SkyMiles Medallion Members are experiencing some of the biggest frustrations. Or, perhaps, the loudest.
They complain they can’t get the system to understand why they so urgently need to talk to a human customer service representative. The usual reason for such an urgent need is that the human customer service representative is more likely to be able to speak human.
But phone systems are cheaper. They never get sick. They never complain. And they most certainly never give the customer attitude. Except in a sort of San Francisco, passive-aggressive way.
Indeed, I tried to call Delta’s phone system and among the very first words I heard were those of a machine telling me that I may experience “long waits.” That’s not exactly inviting, is it?
I pressed on, however, and felt a frisson of anticipation when I soon heard the dialling sound that usually presages talking to a human. It was a cruel tease. I was merely being transferred to a menu. Oh, I can imagine how customers don’t warm to this.
Delta may have heard some of its big-time flyers’ plaintive cries about the new phone system. (They don’t represent the majority, says Delta.)
Chris Matyszczyk
for Technically Incorrect
| October 16, 2021
| Topic: Enterprise Software