So whilst this will be good for me personally, I can\u2019t help but wonder what this change in policy means to the other 96% of passengers who represent the remaining 75% of the business. According to the article in Bloomberg this week, a flight from San Francisco to New York\u2019s JFK airport that cost $400 would earn 5,172 miles under the current program. Next year, under the new rules that same flight would earn less than half of that at only 2,000 miles according to Justin Bachman in Business week<\/a>. That\u2019s a significant loss of reward miles to the average passenger.<\/p>\n What is even interesting to hear is that the other major carriers, American and United, are likely to follow suit with similar changes, Jet Blue, Southwest and Virgin America have also made changes that reward spending over mileage.<\/p>\n Delta have made this move in response to complaints from its top customers, (not me I hasten to add), that there aren\u2019t enough perks and upgrades available to them as the rank and file have crowded into the SkyMiles program. However, I wonder if Delta might have made a different move that might have had the same effect of improving the customer experience for these top customers if it had only listened to what they were really saying, subconsciously.<\/p>\n Clearly, Delta got the feedback from their most valuable customers that there aren\u2019t enough perks and upgrades available and that it bothers them. But what people say <\/i><\/strong>is bothering them isn\u2019t always exactly what is<\/b><\/em> bothering them.<\/p>\n I would argue that what Delta\u2019s most valuable customers were really saying is that the rewards program didn\u2019t make them feel special enough. Perhaps there had been a status before, but that it didn\u2019t feel as exclusive as it once had, so the status had dropped. They complain that there aren\u2019t enough perks, but the truth is that they don\u2019t feel that they are elite anymore.<\/p>\n In a recent post by our senior consultant, Zhecho Dobrev, \u201cWhat People Say vs What They Really Think<\/a>\u201d, we shared a story about a credit card company that had a similar problem with its most valuable customers. In the focus group these customers said that they wanted the card to be accepted more places but in truth it had never had such worldwide acceptance as it did at the time. After doing our Emotional Signature<\/a> research, we learned that what really bothered these customers was that everyone had the card now, so it lacked the prestige that it had once held when they used it around their friends and colleagues.<\/p>\n The SkyMiles revamp has this same feel to it. Delta has made a sweeping change to the rewards program that benefits the top 4% of their clientele and penalizes the remaining 96%. Perhaps if they had dug a little deeper into the meaning behind the feedback they received from their highest value customers, they might have learned that there were other ways to reward those customers that didn\u2019t have such negative repercussions for the majority of their members.<\/p>\n Instead, this looks like another way that Delta is taking away something from its SkyMiles members, under the guise that it is improving the system for all. And if there is one thing I am sure of as a customer experience expert, it\u2019s that customers do not like to lose<\/a> anything.<\/p>\n Delta\u2019s changes go into effect on January 1, 2015. At this time, the other carriers haven\u2019t announced the changes to their awards programs. It will certainly be interesting to see how this affects Delta\u2019s customer retention next year. Chances are that many of those \u201cless special\u201d passengers will be looking at the Delta plane from the window seat of another airline that makes them feel elite.<\/p>\n
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