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For a very long time Delta Air Lines has pushed the motto “Strive for Five” for their employees. The “Strive” part stands for:
And the “Five” is what we, who often fly Delta, have all come to know is their ranking system that starts with a 1 for really poor service and a 5 for great service. I know these surveys matter to Delta as they follow metrics with an almost religious fervor and thus when I am done with a call to the medallion line I almost always tell the rep that I will hold the line for the survey so I can give them a 5 and that I appreciate their help today.
That takes me to the question for this post. Reddit user “Drag6541” recently started a thread asking: “Anyone had an agent refuse to hang up?”
I had to click this one as I too have had experiences when reps have flat out given me bad, or worse wrong, info and I had to correct them. Or they simply refuse to help me when I know they could. A few of these times I have said to them thank you and good-bye and either 1) they do not disconnect the line and thus trigger the survey or 2) I am not transferred to the survey and the line just goes dead.
I find this interesting that I am not the only one experiencing this and maybe you have as well.
Another fascinating comment on the thread was from Reddit user “Naturrensing25” who claims to be a Delta Employee (who knows if true) said:
“You are correct, the surveys are a big deal to the company. You can do an excellent job with every customer, but if no one give you a 5 or they give you a 1, they will have a meeting with you once a month 🙁 it is very frustrating. P.S. 2,3, and 4 are useless. Only 1 and 5 are the ones that will help the company and the representative.“
Once again I have no personal insider knowledge to tell you if this is true or not but it does have the “ring of truth” if you will as my personal experience is that reps do seem very happy when you tell them you are going to give them a 5 when done with the call.
Also if this IS true I bet this is information the company would rather not get out to the general public and mess up their carefully monitored metrics. 🙂
I also will say I have been rather spoiled as a many year Diamond that I do most times end up with very competent agents. I can only recall once in recent memory I was routed to a non-medallion rep they were clueless over anything to do with elite upgrade certs and could not transfer me away to another rep fast enough. So I freely admit that for me my experience is likely better than the average non elite Delta flyer.
What do you think about this. Have you ever had a “bad” Delta rep hold the line to avoid triggering the phone survey? Have you ever given a rep a score lower than 5 before hanging up the call? – René
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I can’t even access the phone system. It doesn’t recognize my phone number (the same phone I’ve always had since having a cell phone) and when I enter my Sky Miles number it doesn’t work. This started a few months ago when the latest update to their phone system went live.
@FNT – Interesting. Delta IT not getting better it seems.
YES!!! Without a doubt. Beyond coincidence. This has happened at least 5 times in the past 18 months.
I’ve had an agent not hang up even when they were good and I have wondered about this topic myself. Regardless of what Delta agents say, it is obvious that getting anything less than 5 is to be avoided, just like with Uber and Lyft.
Often when the survey doesn’t happen, I get an email survey instead so it’s possible that Delta is aware of this situation.
Without question the Customer Service Reps are choosing copy & paste over actually responding to email submissions! One CSR named Sangria White’s copy&paste replies are circulating in different Delta groups and my own interaction with this person lead to her referring to me by the wrong name (it was clearly a copy&paste from another customer) and getting my status level wrong. For Delta reps like Sangria White the Delta Difference means be as lazy as possible and the Medallions are more of a pain to stop bugging Delta … Premium Product.
I’ve rarely had that happen, except when a callback is the way they contact me. As for giving 1 or 5, for the DM line, I think 1 in 5 or 6 require some hand-holding to get the job done (e.g., explaining to them SDC in J or even-exchange vs re-issue) and as long as they work with me, happy to give 5; if it’s someone who refuses to get the job done or keeps claiming the system doesn’t allow them etc., then it’s a toss-up…usually I hang up rather than give a 1 if it sounds like a new agent, but I might’ve given 1’s a while back when someone actually argues I was wrong about something simple! An interesting thing that American, I think, tried once (maybe still do) is to have a 2-question survey — one for the company and one for the agent. Delta might be wise to follow that model with the new changes, so that folks don’t vent with a ‘1’ on agents for the new policy!
Happened to me more than once. Delta reps know when the customer is happy or not, and when they are not, they just do not hang up. Once I called with Teams (work number), and waited as much as I could (over 30 mins). They never hanged up. Dead silence all the time. I eventually hanged up. They never did.
Good to know that only 5s or 1s are relevant for these surveys. I have never given a 1 to anybody. Not even to the rudest or to the clearly incompetent. Will do from now on.
After a bad call I always get put on permanent hold with the music so I can never leave a bad rating. Even after waiting an hour+ the hold music is still playing. This has been going on for at least the past year with poor phone agents.
For the first time that I can remember, we didn’t get an email survey after our flight this summer. It is obvious, they don’t want our feedback as we experienced a completely different level of service this year. With all the negative publicity they are receiving, it’s apparent they don’t want our feedback. We went to their website and filled out a complaint/survey and 5 weeks later got a response. The rep didn’t address the problem directly. The reply was stock, and offered miles within 3 business days. A week later, I had to send another email to actually receive the miles. Delta used to be worth the added expense. Not anymore.