EVP @ Delta called me personally regarding my letter about high Skymiles redemption.
Apr 5, 2011, 10:37 pm
#136
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: South Carolina
Programs: Delta FO
Posts: 313
Thank you for sharing your experience on flyertalk.
It's certainly quite a rare occasion that a WSJ reporter and executive contacts someone in regards to a blog. I hope this will affect positive change in the sky miles program.
Can you share a source to your original blog posting on this forum? I'd imagine many of us would be interesting in seeing it firsthand.
Apr 5, 2011, 10:51 pm
#137
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: CMH
Programs: Delta Gold Medallion
Posts: 628
I think loads of problems with SkyMiles would be fixed pronto if NRSA were eliminated and in its place, every employee would be comped GM status and 100K miles per year. Since you're PM, you'd be excited and enchanted to know that you'd have access to all those extra 25K domestic economy seats available exclusively to PM and DM customers. When you realize you can only get 2 tickets with your 100K miles because the seats are really at 50K, you'll feel the pain of your customers and then fix the problem...
Apr 5, 2011, 11:10 pm
#138
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: HNL
Programs: DL PM/1MM, BW DE (lifetime), HH DE, Marriott PE (lifetime), National Emerald Executive
Posts: 7,205
The problem with AS miles is you cannot mix/match AS partners on a single award ticket. Most of the high value awards I redeem on OneWorld/Skyteam require multiple airlines to get between A and B on the needed dates. When a sinlge AS partner has what you want, AS miles can be a good value.
If that is the case then indeed the value of AS miles plumments significantly.
Apr 5, 2011, 11:12 pm
#139
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: HNL
Programs: DL PM/1MM, BW DE (lifetime), HH DE, Marriott PE (lifetime), National Emerald Executive
Posts: 7,205
Eliminating NRSA and instead giving employees miles (say 2, 3 or 4 per every $ they make, or if all are treated equal then based on the time worked, perhaps seniority graded also) would fix a lot of probems. ...as long as award availability was considerably improved. But if not, then it would be employees and customers on the same side at least.
Apr 5, 2011, 11:35 pm
#140
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Likely being followed...
Programs: DYKWIA Extraordinaire. TrollSlayer Mega Diamond. [insert esoteric sounding status level(s) here]
Posts: 5,240
Apr 5, 2011, 11:46 pm
#141
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Madison, WI, USA
Posts: 14,162
When employees take free meals at the restaurants they work at, however, they are not sitting at the best table in the house in their white smock and black houndstooth pants eating in front of paying customers who are not at such a table. They're off in the corner, behind a counter, or in the kitchen.
Apr 5, 2011, 11:49 pm
#142
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Madison, WI, USA
Posts: 14,162
Apr 6, 2011, 3:01 am
#143
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 8,527
The concept of giving NRSA's BE seats ahead of very frequent (high status) customers on a universal basis is inane. NRSA's provide no revenue and no reduction in Balance Sheet liability, but that is a very basic financial concept complete lost at Delta by every single executuve up to Richard Anderson.
Giving away premium seats easily and regularly will certainly reduce the willingness of businesses and passengers to often pay as much as 10 times the value of the economy ticket just for a little better space and more food and wine. It is therefore a threat to profits and a threat to cultivating high value customers.
Putting Delta associates into premium seats during their puny yearly vacation time is one of the few remaining employee perks left in a business that requires employees to often suffer heroically the B.S. they have to put up with from a business model that has been rationalized to the point of complete irrationality while serving immature, DYKWIA, classless or clueless, impossible to please mouthy customers day in and day out
Delta is in a service business. A service business succeeds or fails based on the quality of its personal service delivered by individual employees at millions and millions of unique " moments of truth ".
It has been demonstrated both by a number of academic studies and real life studies of economic value creation in real service businesses that the following maxim holds true: " Happy Employees Lead to Happy Customers ". Employees who feel respected and are treated well, in turn respect and treat customers well. This board tends to focus obsessively on the relationship between profits and customer loyalty while completely ignoring the the relationship between employee loyalty and customer loyalty and employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. The crappy Dilbert service one receives in a majority of American service businesses anno 2011 is a testament to this lopsided thinking.
An excellent book on this very subject which I can recommend to the " armchair executives " who think (based on their desire for freebies) that they can run a better airline, retail store, consulting firm, etc. by giving away their best products for free while treating their employees like crap is The Service Profit Chain
http://www.amazon.com/Service-Profit.../dp/0684832569
"Loyalty" bought with bribes, kickbacks and payoffs such as Skymiles isn't worth the substantial effort to create it. Just read this forum of people ready to dump Delta at the first sign of a drop in their upgrade percentage.
Real loyalty bought with excellent and differentiated personal service of the kind that customers will jump through hoops to fly Delta is the kind of loyalty that sticks and that really leads to high customer equity. You can't get real, lasting customer loyalty in a service business without addressing employee loyalty.
Apr 6, 2011, 3:30 am
#144
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 8,527
ROFL.
I would say that the writing is on the wall, that under the emerging new industry structure, FFPs (which are always peripheral not a core part of the business) are not going to be a marketing instrument that is emphasized to the degree they were in the past. Benefits to those who can " work a program " such as the core flyertalk poster are going to be getting less and less each year.
This is not because Delta is dumb, incompetent, evil, greedy or hates customers, but simply because frequency and loyalty programs don't really make sense the way they did during another phase of industry evolution because today they don't provide them with as effective leverage to impact loyalty, yields or profits as they can achieve by working on the fundamentals of running their huge oligopoly and international cartel such as focusing and controlling capacity on the most high potential routes with the least competition, with the best schedules at the highest prices (the cynical view).
Also, Delta seems to be demonstrating through improvements to its international hard product, tweaking of its domestic product, focus on selling their premium product to all takers instead of giving it away for free to members of its entitlement-grubbing customer union, that they understand that the real profits are in delivering differentiated value and getting fairly paid for it (the hopeful view).
Why I worry . . .
There are many extremely intelligent, experienced and industry knowledgeable persons at Delta. The leadership team are dedicated professionals who, contrary to what may be believed, know what they are doing and are very capable of performing. In my personal experience, I believe that several of the former NWA leadership are amongst the most brilliant in the aviation industry.
This being said, with Sky Miles so horrible and far inferior to peer programs, this is not done by accident. This extremely capable team executed decisions which have eroded the consumer value of the program. I cannot image that eroding a "loyalty" program would be taken lightly and there are likely substantial pressures which have driven these actions.
The questions needs to be . . . why??
Should we be concerned regarding further erosion or continued loyalty to Delta.
.
There are many extremely intelligent, experienced and industry knowledgeable persons at Delta. The leadership team are dedicated professionals who, contrary to what may be believed, know what they are doing and are very capable of performing. In my personal experience, I believe that several of the former NWA leadership are amongst the most brilliant in the aviation industry.
This being said, with Sky Miles so horrible and far inferior to peer programs, this is not done by accident. This extremely capable team executed decisions which have eroded the consumer value of the program. I cannot image that eroding a "loyalty" program would be taken lightly and there are likely substantial pressures which have driven these actions.
The questions needs to be . . . why??
Should we be concerned regarding further erosion or continued loyalty to Delta.
.
This is not because Delta is dumb, incompetent, evil, greedy or hates customers, but simply because frequency and loyalty programs don't really make sense the way they did during another phase of industry evolution because today they don't provide them with as effective leverage to impact loyalty, yields or profits as they can achieve by working on the fundamentals of running their huge oligopoly and international cartel such as focusing and controlling capacity on the most high potential routes with the least competition, with the best schedules at the highest prices (the cynical view).
Also, Delta seems to be demonstrating through improvements to its international hard product, tweaking of its domestic product, focus on selling their premium product to all takers instead of giving it away for free to members of its entitlement-grubbing customer union, that they understand that the real profits are in delivering differentiated value and getting fairly paid for it (the hopeful view).
Apr 6, 2011, 4:53 am
#145
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: LAX/BOS/HKG/AMS/SFO...hmm, I need a life.
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Apr 6, 2011, 5:20 am
#146
Join Date: Aug 1999
Location: Alexandria, VA, USA NW Platinum Elite Since 1999, United GoldMM, Hyatt Plat, SPG Gold, Hilton Gold, Hertz #1 Gold, IC Ambassador, Avis Chairman's
Posts: 7,445
... and with that, this thread about an EVP calling is now closed... thank you for all those who drove it sooooo off-topic in the last 24 hours.
THIS THREAD WAS NOT ABOUT NRSA TRAVEL!
thezipper
Delta Co-Moderator
THIS THREAD WAS NOT ABOUT NRSA TRAVEL!
thezipper
Delta Co-Moderator