What's the value of your product?

There's been a bit of an uptick in chatter lately around Customer Service and Product Value:

Joseph Jaffe has been tweeting & posting about his experience (miserable) with Delta—aka Delta Skelter
Jon Burg recently wrote about Defining Fair Restitution as it relates to unhappy customers and companies.
Sharon Jaffe @sharonjaffe recently tweeted: 

Had 3 positive customer service experiences this week and am blown away. The problem is now I'm worried about next time, CONSISTENCY is key.

It was Jon's set of tweets and related blog entry that got me thinking about how the value of the product as perceived by the customer is related intricately to the end-to-end brand/product/customer experience. The worse the experience, the lower the value of the product. In some ways, this almost justifies the way that Delta treated Jaffe -- they were merely confirming that their product no longer has any value, even though they may pretend that portions of the product do by charging thru the nose for them.

It seems that there are two options for them in a case like this:

1. they can do what they did and confirm that throughout their organization there is little value given to the brand and product
2. they can provide extensive restitution and recompense to Jaffe, and do several things to ensure that such an event is less likely to occur again (public apologies, employee training, and new formal policies.)
   

Unfortunately, I don't think Delta can afford to do the second one under their current structure, as they failed to factor that level of investment into their restructuring plans. But, by failing to make that investment, they have sabotaged their chance to "premiumize" their product and retain the likes of Jaffe as customers. Given that their current product price structure relies upon the Jaffe's of the world to stay in business, this continued policy will likely lead to their eventual demise.

My conclusion from all of this is that fair value and restitution means nothing unless it is representative of the brand, company and product as a whole. Simultaneously, the offered restitution in the case of a grievance can fail to restore a consumer's brand faith even if the restitution is over-compensatory. If the product and/or brand experience continues to fall below the promised standards, the brand faith will evaporate. And in the "Age of Conversation" evaporation of brand faith leads to vocal brand opponents, and a negative conversation.