Delta's New Flight Attendant App Enables Milestone, Status Recognition

From recognizing mileage milestones to apologies for a recent delay, Delta's customer service is about to get a lot more personalized. The airline just improved its Guest Service Tool on flight attendants' "SkyPro devices" to give flight attendants a heads up if they need to congratulate — or apologize — to you.

Delta will mine the data in its systems to compute a "prioritized list of customers to recognize on each domestic flight based on details like Medallion status, achieved milestones, recent flight interruptions and standing as a corporate traveler." Flight attendants will then be prompted by their on-board "Sky Pro" device to recognize/apologize to a few customers.

After successfully testing the new program in April, Delta is now rolling out the new data-driven solution to all FAs. During the 75-flight test, Delta flight attendants noted less than 1 percents of the recognition events "resulted in a negative customer reaction." Considering that these interactions are highly personalized and customer-focused, it seems strange that anyone would object to being recognized like this — which makes me wonder if the apology was delivered begrudgingly or to an unreasonable passenger.

One passenger was especially pleased by the experience during the test. After experiencing a "service failure" on his outbound flight, a flight attendant on his return flight four days later apologized for the issue. The passenger wrote to Delta: "I must admit, I was pretty impressed with the customer database progress you guys have made… to deliver the right information to a flight attendant to offer a personal apology."

We at TPG applaud these improvements by Delta... and wonder why it's taken this long for an airline to launch such a program. After all, it's an easy way for the airline to build loyalty or mitigate damage after a misstep or issue.

Interested in learning more? Delta has released this video touting the new changes (caution: flashing images and poor-quality dubstep):

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