Digital Marketing, eCommerce & Customer / User Experience Strategy

Company Delta Sector Transportation, Travel & Tourism, Airlines

Digital ‘Vision’ for Tomorrow Improves Online Customer Experience Today

by Christopher Vickers, Atlanta-based Brand, Advertising + Content Marketing & Communications Strategist & Creator

Background  Forrester, JD Power and Harris Interactive research and internal Delta data showed the Delta.com customer experience lagged competitors, what some customers called a “mediocre” online experience . Due to Delta’s legacy IT, improvements were slow, incremental and expensive. The sub-par online experience was costing Delta in lost customers and millions per year in revenue to direct and indirect (online travel agency) competitors.

Opportunity Delta needed a wholesale change – an online experience which was modern, better and new. A new site – starting with a “vision” 3-5 years out - would enable Delta to leapfrog competitors, radically improve the online customer experience and grow online revenue.

Approach We developed personas, mapped customer journeys and integrated personalization, visualization, curated search, mobility and social into our strategy. Four teams created concepts that were highly innovative but executable in the near term.

Outcome Delta marketing and tech executives praised our efforts and began to budget for implementation. But Delta was also in the process of finishing it’s acquisition of Northwest Airlines, and soon began to implement a cost-saving reorganization, reducing the workforce, budgets and putting the Vision on hold. After the dust had settled within a year Delta began to implement our innovative features, functionality and design into Delta.com and is visible and in use today.

Agency Publicis Digital