Another awesome experience with chisholm
 

Wow, after my second rejection and 3rd try to the DM line, I finally got through to the folks at Chisholm, MN. Today I had ticketed TATL flights for later this summer to Paris with a continuing 7 hr flight to an African country. During the first call I was able to upgrade with SWUs for the TATL flights and also requested upgrades for the AF flights, no can do because no availability on AF. A little confused, I confirmed O availability on EF. Called the 2nd time, different answer, yes it's available but no you can't upgrade, apparent wrong fare class (Y)? Double check and confirm on the Skyteam web site, yes Y can be upgraded. The 3rd call was the charm because I found out because of the price of my ticket it was better to upgrade using miles (20K each way for DL and AF legs) for a total of 40K miles and withdraw the SWU to use on a later flight. Amazing, persistence pays off!

See, that's what is so great about the DM line. It only took three calls instead of seven it would have taken for the FOs.

Yet another Chisholm is so great thread. We get it...they are head and shoulders above the rest.

OK, Just Kidding! That is great news. But, I have been having good results with Salt Lake calling in the middle of the night. The other centers, not so much. But I still hope to get Chisholm!

Chisholm is the best
 

I would think that Delta might want to let the Chisholm workers write a training manual. They would probably take in millions more a year if the Chisholm levels of professionalism and empathy were adopted system wide.

When I have complicated reservations that are not easily made online and are in the future I wait until I get the Chisholm station. I remember a couple of years ago I had a really complicated schedule in SE Asia with NW and MAS. Chisholm gave me data that allowed me to make decisions that could have otherwise ended up costing me a great deal. This year when I had to do something similar in Malaysian Borneo, DL was fairly clueless. I never could get the Chisholm station. I ended up going on SQ....which I will now probably continue to do in the future. I went the lowest level of economy, no status at all. The seats were tiny, but legroom was great, and the service was much better than DL FC to SIN.

Not closing Chisholm seems to be the only smart move DL has done.

^^^:D

I have to say, I'm not that impressed. While I've had great experiences with Minnesota-based agents, I've had a larger number of so-so experiences. Not sure what all the fuss is about.

It is the person, not where they are located. Some agents are pro customer service than others. I have had outstanding service in all the centers and bad service in all of them. Just depends on the mood of who answers the phone

Well said^, I'd say my experiences have been 90% positive from all the call centers. It also helps to stay current, everyone here at FlyerTalk does that for me.

What I've also noticed is a sincere willingness on the part of the DL agents to double check when they're not sure of a policy or procedure. I hope not so frequent flyers get the same treatment.

How did you get Chisholm? I really miss them, they have a clue and don't rush you off the phone to pitch an AMEX card like SLC does.

Just lucky, it would be nice to have that special number. But honestly, as other posters have stated, DL has great people in other call centers as well.

I can usually tell by the tone of the voice from the beginning which way the call is going to go. Normally there is no way to tell which call center your getting but the MN accent is noticable.

Making arrangements today to fly my mother out of MEM and me out of SFO to ALB for my father's funeral. I wanted to also return with my mother to MEM and spend some time with her before returning to SFO. Normally, I book flights online, but since this might involve bereavement fares, I called.

I decided to book my mom first, and then figure out how I was going to get there later. I had already picked a few possible itineraries, and just needed to get the bereavement fare info and book the flights. That call went through VJERES (Jamaica?), a complete exercise in frustration. The woman was nice enough, but soft-spoken, hard to understand her English, often inverting/reversing letters and numbers, misspellings, seemed generally barely competent. Long holds while she checked things.

Later, I called Delta again to see if I could book my flights through them and be on the same ALB-MEM flight as my mom. That call went to Nick at the Chisholm center (HIBRES), and he rocked from the moment he picked up the phone. It was *such* a relief to know I was in competent hands and, whadya know, someone who understood me and whom I could understand without a monumental struggle. It was Nick who suggested I could also fly with my mother on the way up to ALB by joining her connecting flight in Atlanta. Lengthened my flight time a little, but what a *fantastic* suggestion.

Because mine was multi-city and not a straightforward RT, Nick couldn't easily get me bereavement fares on the whole trip. But he pounded his terminal into submission, working different angles, and was able to get me a decent price in the end.

The VJERES/HIBRES experiences couldn't have been more different. Give me Nick, I'll book Delta every time. Give me a barely competent VJERES agent who can't speak or hear intelligibly, I'll hang up (as I did later on some hotel.com bozo) and go elsewhere.

I have had horrible (Kay) and fabulous experiences today on the DM line. Not sure where they were located.

Maybe Delta has plans to charge a fee for Chisholm calls :D

Elite call center monitization.

For god sake delete that post! ECCM is something I have been praying they would not figure out...DELETE PLEASE before SMI sees this (Ok..that is a slim chance:))