O.K.



I admit it.



I am going to pick on an easy industry to pick on:  airlines.



Last Friday I left New York City at 4:45 am to embark on a holiday journey out West.  I can only thank my lucky stars that my wife and three children were not in tow–they were already at the destination, and “Dad” was meeting them there.



Earlier that morning–is there such a thing?–I was awoken by an automated call from Delta Airlines, the airline that always seems to be telling me what time and where I need to be.  In one of those “life-like” voices, I was told “Your flight is delayed and will now land in Boise at 12:31.”



O.K.  Not bad.  I was supposed to get in at 12:10, so the delay is only twenty minutes. How nice of Delta to call me at 3:00 am to inform me of a twenty minute delay.  Customer Service at its finest.



Fast forward to my arrival at the Newark Airport at 5:15 that morning, where a nice bag porter informed me that my 7:00 am flight to Salt Lake City–which would then go on to Boise–was delayed six hours and would not leave until 1:30 pm that afternoon.



Ouch.  Sleep deprived at the hands of Delta Airlines, and their clearly confused automated service attendant.



But it gets better.



Later that day, upon my “re-arrival” at Newark, after numerous conversations with Delta’s friendly offshore customer service organization, who still insisted that I was to arrive in Boise at 12:31, which was physically impossible without the use of some sort of time machine, I had the encounter with Delta that really flummoxed me.



By then, I had scripted my own journey, knowing that Delta was of no use.  They could get me to Salt Lake City, and from there I had decided I would rent a car from Hertz to drive five hours to my destination, instead of waiting for their connection to Boise–whenever that would be.



So I stood at the counter with my briefcase, suitcase, and Christmas shopping bag, kindly asking the Delta attendant to check my suitcase to Salt Lake City, and cancel the second leg of my trip to Boise.



“Can’t do that.  This is a through flight.  Can’t get your bag off the plane in Salt Lake.”



What?



“Computer won’t let me do it.”



I now had visions of my bag in Boise, and visions of myself driving from Salt Lake City to Sun Valley, my final destination.  At this point leaving the bag behind was a serious option.



“Just take your bags on the plane,” the attendant smartly advised.  Which, at that moment, seemed like a great idea, until I advanced to the next stage of airport hell, otherwise known as TSA.



“Can’t take three bags through security, sir,” the TSA attendant directed me.  At this point, I really, really wanted to tell TSA about my 3:00 am wake-up call, my delayed flight, my conversations with India, and the inflexibility of Delta’s ticketing system which somehow couldn’t re-direct my suitcase off of the plane in Salt Lake City.



But I knew better.  TSA only cares about your ticket, your photo ID, and making sure you don’t have a spare nickel jammed in the upper reaches of your jeans pocket.  So, it was back to the ticket counter to find my friendly Delta ticketing agent, who, in her defense, was indeed able to get me through security after some serious haggling with TSA and her own manager.  Once through, I gave her a sincere “Happy Holidays.”



It was at that point that I fully realized where most of my frustration had stemmed from.  It wasn’t the people.  Rather, it was the process and the system.  In all cases along my journey, the process and the technology system was either broken or inflexible.  The automated phone system had confused my flight;  the offshore call center had clearly used the same data that the phone system had;  and the Delta system was too inflexible to re-route my bag, and their process too “system dependent” to the point where a manager couldn’t even make a phone call to make an exception.



“I’d lose my job,” she said, when I asked if she could make a phone call to Salt Lake.  Wow.  Talk about an inflexible process.



The airlines may never be fixed.  I am certainly not going to try.  But other industries should take note.  And when designing the “customer experience,” I’d say that my Delta example gives us two key lessons:



1.   Insist on Flexible technology.

2.   Insist on Flexible, Agile, processes.



Now, if we could only fix the rental car industry: