Essay - Delta Airlines Customer Centricity Introduction Airlines are Fighting for Their...

Delta Airlines Customer Centricity

Introduction

***** are fighting for their financial viability and the opportunity to survive for ano*****r decade and their challenges to stay in business is made all the more difficult by the fact that costs associated with service are often the first to be cut. Becoming customer-centric requires a cultural change in an organization to embrace making cus*****mer requests, preferences, and unmet needs the priority in system, process and new service development, especi*****y in airlines (Wasmer, Bruner, 1991). It ***** the intent of this paper to explain how Delta Airlines has made a successful transition from being another American-based carrier focused purely on efficiency to one concentrating on cus*****mer satisfaction ***** customer retention. Delta Airlines has accomplished this through a combination ***** process-based, technologically-based and strategy-based initiatives that has led to their achieving cus*****mer centricity in their organizations. Suggestions ***** provided ***** how Delta ***** can become more customer-centric and also explain ***** lasting ***** can be made *****in Delta's ongoing marketing strategies ***** strong leadership.

***** Delta Airlines Customer Centricity

Of all domestic air carriers in the U.S., Delta ***** continues to lead competitors in the areas of integrating Web-based and mobile technologies to give its customers an opportunity to interact with the company how they choose *****. Delta's use ***** mobile-based check-ins, increasing reliance on ***** website for processing upgrades, seating assignments and managing special dietary ***** illustrate how the company is successfully using *****, ***** ***** social networking applications to ***** more customer centric than *****. The collection of technologies known as Web 2.0 are forming the foundation of social networking applications that seek to create ***** collaborative relationships ***** customers (Bernoff, Li, 2008). Appendix A of this document provides an overview of ***** networking applications.

Delta Airlines ***** defined a specific vision ***** to how ***** will accomplish customer *****ity through the ***** of Web 2.0 technologies (Wilson, 2002). The *****lines' support of social networking is ***** the entire culture more *****, transparent and accountable, ***** translating into exceptional customer service. *****'s been shown that to the extent customer centricity can lead to greater levels ***** accountability and transparency, there is a greater level of customer loyalty and customer ***** (Wasmer, *****, 1991). Delta Airlines has progressively modified their *****s over the last twelve years (Higgins, 1996) resulting in a mix of services ***** *****s to alleviate the biggest pa***** points of business and le*****ure travelers (LaMotta, 2006). These include the troublesome tasks of checking in, switching seats, and ***** defining ***** needs. By using social networking applications Delta has been able to stay current on what cus*****mers' unmet needs they need to focus on ***** stay customer-centric ***** time.

***** for Greater Customer Centricity at Delta Airlines

Despite all the changes ***** ***** has made, from initiating many forms of customer listening ***** social networking platforms including blogs, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, and others, the company ***** gained greater insight into how their customers want to be served. What still is lacking