I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that this happens every so often, but it sure is kind of hilarious when it does.
A Diamond Medallion’s shocking email response from Delta
JonNYC flags how a Delta Diamond Medallion member emailed the carrier feedback about a negative experience. The response from Delta started with “here’s a more polished and professional version with a warm, empathetic tone.”
Funny enough, the feedback being provided by the customer was specifically regarding frustration in dealing with Delta representatives through the chat feature. This Delta representative assured this person that the complaints were being taken seriously… only to not take out the line about AI.
For those curious, the email response continued as follows:
Thank you for reaching out to Delta Air Lines regarding your experience. I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback with us.
I am truly sorry for the frustration and inconvenience you experienced during your interactions with our representatives. Receiving inconsistent information and having a chat session end unexpectedly can be incredibly disappointing, especially when you are seeking assistance. As a valued Diamond Medallion Member, you deserve knowledgeable, attentive, and seamless service, and I regret that we did not meet those expectations.
Please be assured that we take your concerns very seriously. I have shared your feedback with our Flight Operations Senior Leadership team for review, and we will work closely with the appropriate departments to address the service shortcomings you described. Feedback such as yours is invaluable as we continue to improve our processes and enhance the customer experience.
In Delta’s defense, the issue here was being caught
Look, I’m trying to give a certain someone the morning off here, so let me say this… 😉
For at least a couple of decades now, airlines have largely automated their customer relations responses, at least in some major way. Of course this back-and-forth chatting with an AI tool to come up with a response is a fairly new concept, but even before that, customer relations would basically be copying and pasting different form responses, with only slight customization.
We’ve also seen customer relations emails over the years where the representatives forgot to fill in the details, and that shows, like the email saying “Dear [insert name].”
I don’t think anyone actually expects that an airline customer relations employee sits down and writes each response from scratch. What actually matters is that the feedback is passed on to the relevant departments, and I assume (hope?) that’s still happening.
So what matters here is that “senior leadership” knows that a Diamond Medallion isn’t happy with something that happened, and that can help inform future decisions (assuming there are enough complaints). Of course the “crime” here is forgetting to remove the evidence of the AI… oops!
I guess a human going back-and-forth with some sort of an AI tool is still better than what I covered back in 2023, where American basically automated its customer relations, where any response from “Gemma Flint” was automated, rather than being a human response. I’m sure that’s still going on, but I believe they cycle through names…
Bottom line
A top-tier Diamond Medallion member emailed Delta to provide feedback about the company’s chat feature, only to then receive a response from customer relations that started with “here’s a more polished and professional version with a warm, empathetic tone.”
As you’d expect, this response shocked the customer. In fairness, I don’t think anyone actually thought Delta wasn’t using AI for customer relations emails. The issue here is forgetting to remove the prompt. So perhaps Delta needs to add a new prompt to its AI script, specifically checking for no obvious references to AI. 😉
What do you make of this Delta customer relations response?
