Delta: Sometimes The Quality Of Service Is About The Art of Recovery

In a private moment after a particularly tense meeting with an important client, the senior manager at the client wrapped his arm around my shoulder and said, "Sometimes the quality of service is about the art of recovery." That lesson stuck with me throughout my career, and I was reminded of it recently while reading a letter from Delta Airlines this week.

In short, the letter apologized for a recent unpleasant flight experience when my bag was left behind (made even more frustrating since I had to pay $25 to check the bag in the first place.) The letter announced that I was going to be awarded 1,500 frequent flyer miles for my troubles.

Last week, I received a similar letter from Delta Airlines awarding me 1,000 frequent flyer miles for a cancelled flight.

Despite the inconveniences from the delays and the baggage mishap, I did not walk away from those incidents at the time with a poor feeling about Delta, rather sensing it was just my time to have problems that are common on all airlines. During the delay, Delta updated passengers with honest and relatively accurate progress reports, and ultimately we reached our deistination. When my bag did not show up, the clerk methodically and efficiently recorded my information and the next morning my bag was delivered to my hotel, as promised.

So while the letters and frequent flyer bonus miles were more symbolic than substantial, they were recognition that something went awry, and Delta management noticed. I like that.

My View

It is an unfortunate fact of business and life that things will go wrong. Using that long ago observation about recovery, Perfect Service identifies these as opportunities to demonstrate superior service.

One of the Perfect Service building blocks, that of "Perfect Improvement," is that customer service people must be empowered to "fix the situation" while the organization reviews the problem to determine root causes and ways to prevent it in the future. Customer service people do not wait until the problem is solved, but rather, do their best to make the impact of the current problem minimal.

Customers should feel like the error is not a usual event, and that the
service provider takes this specific situation very seriously. My counsel is to
make the company or person feel like you are "over responding" to an unusual
situation.

My son was recently receiving baseball lessons from a pitching coach to help him control where his pitches were going. After throwing a bad pitch, my son would think he was a wild pitcher. The coach said that when a pitch is wild, the pitcher should think that this is an unusual situation, and that the next pitch will be back to normal. That mindset alone gave him confidence, even when things go wrong.

At the airport, my expectation is that flight delays and baggage problems are normal events. What Delta did was to remind me that, at least to this company, the situation was being viewed critically, and they were sorry. This reaction makes me think that perhaps my situation was not normal, and that Delta was going to figure out how to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Of course, if it does happen again, and I get a third and fourth letter, then my conclusion is that Delta is using these apologies as the primary means of recovery, rather than improving the process. And that would be bad.

Companies Must Organize Differently to Deliver "Perfect Improvement"

When a typical company decides to undertake a "quality improvement" program, it creates "quality improvement teams" with members from different functional areas. The team members belong to the QITs in addition to their real job...which hasn't changed. Program progress, if any, is made outside of the true business. Often, these programs collapse of their own weight since people's "real" jobs will take priority.

In the "Perfect Service" approach, "Perfect Improvement" is imbedded into everyone's jobs. One of the taglines my team has used is: Perfect Service--The Way We Do Business.

So what is the best way to organize? I believe a three-way attack of satsifaction data is the best method.

--First, the Client Service team is responsible for improving that client's satisfaction. Each time their client's data arrives, the team must look at the results for satisfaction levels. When levels are less than stellar, the team is responsible for "fixing the situation," ie, assuring the issue is investigated, analyzed, and resolved for that client. Even if the problem is wider than just that client, the client team is responsible for insulating their client from future impact, until the overall "problem is solved."

--Second, the Operations Team responsible for each transaction that is measured is responsible for improving the satisfaction with their respective services. Whenever a client survey arrives for their service transaction, the Operations Team needs to understand the details of the result, and combine it with the results of other clients. The Operations Team is then responsible for "solving the problem." By reviewing their transactions across clients, this team is able to prioritize improvement efforts based on impact to overall client satisfaction.

--Third, Key Satisfaction Teams are organized to review and improve satisfaction scores of specific Key Success Factors (KSFs). Similar to the Operations Team, these teams are responsible for reviewing data across clients and transactions for their specific KSF. This team is then able to prioritize improvement efforts based on impact to overall client satisfaction.

This three-way or "cubed" review and analysis of data allows management to invest in those areas that will have the largest return on investment (in terms of satisfaction). Meanwhile, while business management is investing here, Client Service leadership is making sure the client is made happy right away.

Both Client Service teams and Operations teams are attacking the deficient results as part of their job, and evaluated based on their ability to move the satisfaction needle.

Building Blocks For "Perfect Service"

To satisfy your customer, you can't just hope it will happen...you have to do something differently! I love the title of the best-selling sales book "Hope Is Not A Strategy." The same holds true for customer service. Companies often say customers are important, and then try to incent employees to make it happen. Motivation is just part of the equation. The key point here is that a company must be designed to deliver superior service and not just to lean on employees to perform extraordinarily.

"Perfect Service" has three main building blocks:

1. Perfect Knowledge--It is critical to know how your customers are feeling about each contact or transaction performed on their behalf. By collecting information on the actionable details, you receive early warning signals when things are not going right. This data becomes the lifeblood of your organization, driving most decisions and evaluations within the company.

2. Perfect Improvement--The data is received and reviewed by several teams: client teams, operations teams, and "key success teams." The company's success is driven by improvement in these metrics, so when a poor review is received, action is swift by fixing the client situations (short-term) while you are solving systemic problems (long-term). Accountability for improvement is clear. Prioritization for service improvement is based on a "return on satisfaction" metric.

3. Perfect Guarantee--The ultimate statement of commitment is the 100% Unconditional Guarantee. What can you say to a guarantee that states: If you are unhappy with our services for any reason, you pay what you think the services are worth. To invoke the guarantee, simply call the president of the company. It doesn't get any clearer than that.

These building blocks are powerful tools designed to change how a company does business. An organization that uses these tools cannot help but pay attention to things that matter to the client.

Next posts will drive into details for each building block.