Thats because their system is so much easier to handle on a day to day basis.Ch. 12 said:
They dont..... upgrade, interline, handle international, take dogs, do they do counter to counter, limited unaccompanied kids, seat assignments and any other number of items that their agents dont have to worry about at the counter (to slow the line) while US agents are having to do all of these at various times. 1 international reissue can tie up an agent for as much as 30 minutes, 1 PDQ can take 5-10 minutes depending on what is in it and how much info the shipper provides, try getting a family seated together on a 4 leg segment when they are all in different records, etc.... to lump them in together and say X is better than Y is not a fair comparison. If US agents didnt have to handle any of the "extras" or Full Service items the company keeps harping on as being better service, then I would say it would probably be a toss up in many cities.
As an example- yesterday we had an internationl group of about 20. With Sabre, only 1 person can be in the record at a time putting in the required international info (passport and contact info) so 1 agent or 2 with great timing get tied up with a group checking documents and putting the info in. Meanwhile, I get to work the rest of the line by myself (cutbacks leave 2 agents to work the main line in the middle of the day). I'm sure everyone in the line was thinking about how slow we were and how "great" the customer service was they were getting. It wasnt the agents fault that they were getting "the treatment", its the system and requirements we have to go by. I was actually the First Class checkin so when someone was in that line, everyone else had to wait. I'm sure if they were in the WN line, they would have been moved thru faster because there would have been no need to put in the intl info and they wouldnt have had any of the FC people cutting in front of them, hence their perception would have been of great service. They are two totally different products with different requirements and limitations placed on the agents so if we werent required to do the "full service" items, I feel we could do it better on a whole easily.
) but not all of them like or want to deal with it. As long as they are given a reasonable option of having a human around, then I have no problem with it. However, given the current limitations on the kiosk checkin (it still has problems quite often) and the cutbacks involved (at certain parts of the day we have 1 regular checkin/ 1 FC checkin/ and 2 at kiosk), I just hope the company doesnt think everything is hunky dory because we have a fancy kiosk machine when in fact it still has major limitations and often requires quite a bit of human touch on a daily basis. I dont know how much info gets passed on above about just how limited it is (even with all the upgrades they've done to it recently) and think we are just a bunch of whiners. It still has problems when a ticket has been changed (inculding reissues from a schedule change which we all know never happens at US), major UA eticket problems when they dont come thru the system, multiple same names on a flight, and many other situations where it cant find someone. If they are going to go for automation, then they better make sure that they are doing everything they can to get the problems being addressed corrected asap. I dont think anyone is fooling themselves that CARS and kiosks arent here to stay. The problem is that now that we have kiosks, CCY seems to think everything is perfect and there arent any or many problems and they dont understand why all the fuss. Maybe its time for another visit to watch the kiosks at work. Its often easier for me to just do it and be done with it instead of taking the customer through the process only to not have it work for one reason or another.
And none of the supermarkets in my area are unionized so I'm not taking a union job away from them either. Not everything in my life revolves around the union.
