Delta System Outage Creates Opportunity To Build Customer Loyalty

Caption

Due to a power outage at its Atlanta headquarters, Delta held its planes on the ground for hours before lifting the ground stop around 10 am Monday morning. / Flickr

Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines is still working to resume normal operations after a computer failure early Monday morning caused the carrier to issue a full worldwide ground stop. 

As of around 3 pm Monday afternoon, Delta had canceled more than 400 flights, leading to thousands of stranded and delayed passengers.

But Delta could use the muck-up as an opportunity to gain a few more frequent fliers.

“If you can fix [the problems] to their satisfaction, if you can make them feel better about doing business with you even though there was an issue or a problem, then you actually increase your likelihood to have a loyal customer more long-term,” said Bill Gessert, President of the International Customer Service Association.

Delta said a power outage at its Atlanta headquarters early Monday morning led to a computer failure that affected operations worldwide. 

The airline held its planes on the ground for hours before lifting the ground stop around 10 am Monday morning. Planes already in the air were allowed to continue to their destinations.

A Georgia Power spokesman told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the power outage resulted from an issue with Delta equipment and that crews were working with the airline to fix the problem.

Delta has issued travel vouchers to all passengers traveling between August 8 and August 12 and CEO Ed Bastian has even issued an apology video. In the video Bastian said the work to restore airline systems was an “all hands on deck effort.”

Gessert said the fact that the incident--and subsequent traveler suffering--was system-wide could also help Delta. If a problem looks big enough, it keeps passengers from feeling singled-out.

“So, that gives the Delta [customer service] representative, when they're interacting with those customers, a really unique opportunity to repair that relationship and to actually make the customer feel good about their choice of Delta in the first place,” Gessert said.

However, Gessert warned that the airline would be wise to issue apology gifts to all its affected customers.

Updates from Delta can be found here.