Stuck in the Middle with You

The first part of this week I was out in Los Angeles for the inaugural Magento Imagine eCommerce conference (more about that to come). En route, I ended up trying (via standby) to get on an early flight for one leg (ATL to LAX), and just got squeezed onto the flight as the last passenger.

This meant five hours plus in a middle seat in coach. Nothing to write home about — this certainly falls in the first-world-problems camp — just the average run-of-the-mill experience that makes traveling tiring.

The next day, I got this in my email:

Excellent, proactive customer service. Never got one of these before – maybe it only comes with a certain level of Medallion Status?

Not that 500 sky miles is going to make any significant difference (and never mind that of course on every full plane there are lots of folks in middle seats) but I thought it was quite clever to notice and simply acknowledge that the much heralded benefits of being a frequent flier didn’t apply in this case.

Good work Delta, and thanks for the aisle seat on the way home.

3 Comments

  1. I had a similar Delta experience after a 3 hour mechanical delay nearly caused me to miss me international flight. Again, it wasn’t the value of the points, but the proactive acknowledgement that I appreciated.

  2. Hey John,

    I had a similar experience last week of unexpected good will. The man that plows my driveway got stuck. I helped him shovel out – it took a total of 5 minutes and is something that I hope anyone would have done. He didn’t charge me for the plowing that day – saved me money and more importantly made me a champion of his services. Its the little, often over looked things that really build brand loyalty.

  3. JetBlue once issued me at $25 credit for a flight that was about 15 minutes delayed. It took a while to figure out which flight and why (there had been a few JB flights that month, since their email didn’t say much beyond “sorry for your inconvenience” and the delay seemed insignificant.

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