DeltaAssist

Delta Air Lines and Using Social Media for Customer Relationship Management

and Real-Time Customer Support

Introduction
On March 31, 2008, Dave Carroll, a Canadian singer/songwriter and a member of

the band “Sons of Maxwell,” was on a United Airlines plane that had just brought

him to Chicago from Halifax, en route to Omaha to kick-off a week-long tour of

Nebraska. While Dave was waiting to deplane another passenger noticed that

baggage handlers on the ramp were throwing guitars around and started telling

other passengers. Dave feared that his guitar was being mishandled and notified

flight attendants, who told him to speak to the gate agent, who passed the buck to

an agent at Dave’s final destination, Omaha. When Dave arrived in Nebraska he

found that the base of his $3,500 Taylor guitar had been smashed. After a long,

nine-month battle with United Airlines, United said that they would not take

responsibility. Dave was offered $1,200 in flight vouchers as final settlement.

Dave decided to use his musical skills to his advantage—he wrote a song called

“United Breaks Guitars” and produced a music video. The video was posted on

YouTube on July 6, 2009, and the rest, as they say, is history. “United Breaks

Guitars” and the two follow-ups (“United Breaks Guitars 2” and “United Breaks
Guitars 3”) have been viral hits. By the end of 2011, the first video had been

viewed 11.3 million times on YouTube, the second video (released August 17,

2009) had been viewed 1.4 million times, and the third video (released March 1,

2010) had been viewed 450,000 times. Of particular note is how fast the views of

the first video grew: 150,000 within the first day, 500,000 within by the fourth day,

and 5 million after about six weeks. United Breaks Guitars was such a viral hit that

Time magazine named it one of the top ten viral videos of 2009. The viral spread of

Dave's story and this negative publicity for United Airlines was fueled not only by

Dave's catchy song and charming good looks but also by mainstream media

organizations such as CNN picking up the story and pushing it out to a wider

audience beyond YouTube and social media.

The video’s success prompted United Airlines to contact Dave within days of the

first video’s release to offer some compensation ($3,000, which Dave asked to be

donated to a charity). However, this was not enough and United’s reputation

suffered for some time.

It was early February 2010 and the comedian, actor, and director of films such as

the critically acclaimed cult classic Mallrats, Kevin Smith boarded a Southwest

Airlines flight in Oakland, CA bound for Burbank, CA. Mr. Smith, who is an avid

Twitter user and at the time had approximately 1.6 million followers, experienced

a difficulty—he had trouble fitting into his seat. (Kevin Smith is not known for
having a svelte figure.) Instead of dealing with this embarrassing situation in a

sensitive manner, the Southwest crew humiliated Mr. Smith by having the captain

order him off the plane and to a later flight. Needless to say, Mr. Smith was not

happy with this treatment. What did he do? He tweeted. Mr. Smith’s followers on

Twitter heard about his predicament. They also heard his side of the story about

how he was mistreated by Southwest Airlines. Examples of Mr. Smith’s angry

tweets included the following:

Dear @SouthwestAir – I know I’m fat, but was Captain Leysath really justified in

throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?

Wanna tell me I’m too wide for the sky? Totally cool. But fair warning, folks: IF

YOU LOOK LIKE ME, YOU MAY BE EJECTED FROM @SOUTHWESTAIR.

Dear @SouthwestAir, I’m on another one of your planes, safely seated & buckled-

in again, waiting to be dragged off in front of the normies.

What did Mr. Smith’s followers do? In addition to sending him supportive

messages, they retweeted his tweets, meaning that they forwarded them on to their

followers. After a short period of time word of Mr. Smith’s problems with

Southwest had spread over Twitter, on to Facebook, and across the Internet. It

became in a very short time a viral phenomenon in social media. Southwest

suddenly and unexpectedly had a public relations nightmare on their hands. To

make matters worse, the social media savvy cable news channels such as CNN

picked up on the story and started reporting Mr. Smith’s misfortunes with

Southwest Airlines. Although just a day later Southwest used their Twitter account

and blog to publicly apologize and offer to make amends, the substantial damage

had been done.

On June 7, 2011, 34 US soldiers were returning home from Afghanistan. They

flew Delta Air Lines. Unfortunately, they had too many bags: Delta’s policy then

was to allow active military personnel traveling on orders in economy/coach to

check up to three bags, but the soldiers had four bags each. Delta’s agent,

following company policy, charged $200 out-of-pocket excess bag fees to those

soldiers who had a fourth bag. Naturally, this did not go down well. Some of the

soldiers decided to record a video while in flight talking about this issue. “We

showed up and found out we had too many bags,” said Army Staff Sgt. Robert

O’Hair in the video. “We had four bags, and Delta Air Lines only allows three

bags. Anything over three bags you have to pay for.” The video was posted on

YouTube when the soldiers arrived home and received about 20,000 views in a

short time. Delta, however, moved fast to issue a response and handle the situation

through their blog. Rachael Rensink, Delta’s social media manager, wrote an

explanation and apology on the company’s blog and then updated it when the

airline changed the official policy to four bags soon thereafter.

…

These three examples highlight how easy it is for customers—whether they are

celebrities with huge Twitter followings, regular people, or members of the

military—to use social media to share their bad experiences with others online

quickly and easily. Airlines, particularly major US carriers like Delta and United,

do not have great reputations when it comes to delivering exemplary customer

service. To make matters worse, it seems that everyone these days has at least a

few stories of recent flying experiences that failed to meet their expectations and

left them unhappy. Social media makes it easy for unhappy customers to post—in

real-time—about their unfortunate encounters with beleaguered airline employees

and start spreading the word. (Inflight Internet access makes it even easier to share

photos and videos of bad service as it happens!) While having a large Twitter

following like Kevin Smith’s made it very easy for him to reach millions in a

matter of seconds, Dave Carroll’s experience shows that even someone without an

initial following can have an impact that grows over time. In the case of the US

soldiers returning from Afghanistan, that video stopped short of going viral only

because Delta’s social media team spotted the problem and stepped in to fix it in a

public and open manner the same day that it occurred.

In the age of social media and sophisticated mobile smartphones with high-speed

Internet connections and the ability to take photos and produce videos, companies

are increasingly worried about customers using their “social media soapbox” to
spread the word about bad experiences. Gone are the days of writing a “stern

letter” to a company’s customer relations department or “talking to the manager”—

customers now are increasingly likely to vent their frustrations on Facebook and

Twitter and in doing so spreading negative word-of-mouth through social media

content that could go viral and be seen by millions of people.

What Can Airlines Do When Customers Complain

on Social Media?

Being an airline in the days of high oil prices, tough competition, shrinking profit

margins, and challenging global economic conditions is not easy. To make matters

worse, when customers are unhappy they turn to social media as a platform for

venting their frustration. And, sometimes, news of their frustrations spreads and

hurts airlines brands’ and reputations. What can an airline do under these

circumstances?

Throughout 2009 and the first half of 2010 Delta Air Lines, one of the largest

airlines in the world paid close attention to what was happening to their

competitors due to social media incidents like Dave Carroll’s “United Breaks

Guitars” problem with United Airlines and Kevin Smith’s embarrassment on

Southwest Airlines. Many people in the airline industry saw “United Breaks

Guitars” as an isolated incident, but as more and more complaints started flowing

through Facebook and Twitter they started to see a growing and concerning trend.
The customer care and marketing teams at Delta’s global headquarters campus on

the edge of the world’s busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in

Atlanta, were also concerned. It was only a matter of time until Delta attracted

some negative attention in social media and they did not want their name to

become associated with bad service like what had happened to United Airlines

after Dave Carroll’s video went viral and attracted considerable media attention. In

the first half of 2010 Delta was working toward the September 2010 launch of a

new multi-year corporate advertising campaign (with their agency

Wieden+Kennedy) built around the tagline “Keep Climbing” and the theme of

building a better—not necessarily bigger—airline. This was part of a major effort

to rebrand the airline and position it as an innovator that was striving to make the

flying experience better for everyone. Negative publicity from unhappy customers

through social media would not help. As they approached the busy summer travel

months in 2010, Delta’s customer care and marketing teams hatched a plan that

would revolutionize customer relations.

The Birth and Growth of DeltaAssist

On April 26, 2010, Delta quietly created a Twitter account called @DeltaAssist as

part of a pilot program targeted at using Twitter as a customer service channel. On

June 25, 2010, Delta’s Vice President for Reservations and Customer Care, Allison

Ausband, announced on Delta’s official company blog the creation of the

DeltaAssist team. The team, comprised of seasoned reservations agents who were

social media enthusiasts, started out answering tweets sent to @DeltaAssist

through Twitter Monday to Friday, 8:00 am to 9:30 pm US Eastern time.

Customers would send tweets to the team asking questions, seeking help, and

offering suggestions. Delta had opened up a new channel for customers to reach

out to the company and had a dedicated team standing by to listen and, when

necessary, respond. Importantly, all members of the DeltaAssist team were

reservations/customer care supervisors, which meant that they had the authority to

directly help customers without having to slow down the process by seeking

supervisor approval.

The Early Days: Initial Pilot Program

Expansion: Doubling the Team and
Going 24/7
DeltaAssist was launched as a pilot program that allowed Delta to experiment with

using social media as a way to interact with customers. It gave customers a new

channel to get help. But it was also a way for social media-savvy customers to vent

their inevitable frustrations from time-to-time. Instead of taking up the time of an

airline employee at the airport or in the telephone call center, customers for the

first time could use Twitter to speak to Delta—and receive a reply in a short

timeframe. Customers who tweeted @DeltaAssist were impressed with how

quickly agents responded and how helpful (and friendly!) they were. They were

able to solve problems—including rebooking customers who had missed their

flights or whose flights had been canceled. Managers at Delta also found that some

of their high-value customers (HVCs) were using DeltaAssist as it was a

convenient and fast way for business travelers to get customer support while on the

go. They would simply tweet their question and then check back in 15-20 minutes

for the response. The team at Delta also found that this was a very efficient way to

get customer feedback.

By the end of 2010 Delta had found that customers were very happy with the

service quality and efficiency of DeltaAssist. Positive word-of-mouth was

spreading—a somewhat uncommon thing for an airline—and DeltaAssist usage

was rapidly growing. To meet increasing demand without sacrificing DeltaAssist’s

hard-earned reputation for delivering high-quality service in a short period of time,

Delta increased the size of the DeltaAssist team from five to nine in early 2011.

There was still a problem—they did not have team members standing by around

the clock. As the blogger “Cranky Flier” pointed out, it was “great news” that

Delta started DeltaAssist but it was “not good enough” to not offer this customer

service channel on a 24/7 basis. Delta agreed and extended coverage to match

those of the telephone call center—24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Further Growth: Copycats, Facebook,

and DeltaAssist en Espanol
Things were going well and DeltaAssist was proving itself a customer service

success. It was such a good idea that other companies in the travel, as well as other

industries, started copying the DeltaAssist concept (including companies notorious

for customer service failures such as Comcast). On March 3, 2011, Delta opened

up DeltaAssist on Facebook, the world’s largest and most popular online social

network. Customers could use either Facebook (through a dedicated DeltaAssist

tab on Delta’s Facebook page) or Twitter to get customer support from the

DeltaAssist team. However, Delta still encouraged customers to use Twitter for

real-time support and said that messages sent on Facebook would be answered

within “24-72 hours.” The reason for this seemed to be because of how Facebook

handled messages and privacy (private messages could be sent easily between

customers and agents through Twitter, whereas messages on Facebook in need of a

private reply were assigned a ticket number and had to be answered by email).

Finally, in late 2011 Spanish-speaking agents were added to the DeltaAssist team

so that Delta could open a dedicated DeltaAssist en Espanol account on Twitter

(@DeltaAssist_ES) to serve Spanish-speaking customers.

DeltaAssist at the End of 2011 and Into

2012
By the end of 2011, the DeltaAssist team had 14 agents covering @DeltaAssist and

@DeltaAssist_ES on Twitter and DeltaAssist on Facebook. The main Twitter

account had just over 42,000 followers and had sent approximately 60,000 tweets

(this excludes direct messages sent to customers as follow-ups to questions and

comments). The initiative, which started as an experimental pilot program, in a

matter of 18 months had become a much talked about and effective customer

service channel. Things were going well.

The social media team at Delta does not want to stop innovating how they can

make the travel experience better for their customers, from their HVCs to the

members of the Delta SkyMiles frequent flier program to infrequent fliers. Delta

proved that social media could be used as a channel for delivering high-quality

customer service and the team began 2012 brainstorming innovations in customer

service for 2012. What can Delta do, either with DeltaAssist or by developing new

initiatives, to further innovate how they interact with customers, particularly when

they have to deal with complaints and service failures?

Here are a couple of links to see what Delta is up to now:

http://thepointsguy.com/2016/04/delta-is-getting-rid-of-delta-assist-twitter-

account/

http://news.delta.com/deltaassist-customer-support-now-available-delta[Y1]