Chaos At The Kiosks!

[Severed-N-Happy]

I recently was offered an option to return from furlough as a CARS agent, and I said ..what the heck WHY NOT? Previously had 18 yrs invested before severance..Money not bad for the job performed, health bennies decent and affordable(for me), closer to my home than past job, gives me a chance to retire with whatever bennies are left in the package, albeit reduced from the past.

Everyone is aware there have been many delays and cancellations the past week or so..and the ATO staffing is of course pretty sad..[THAT'S WHY THEY HIRED BACK FOLKS(scabs) LIKE ME]..

Cut to the chase...the kiosk failure rate, even on a good day, in my opinion is probably about 25 percent at my best estimate, perhaps others can chime in with their guesstimates. Failures include international itineraries, paper tickets, third party tkt vendors, and OA E-ticketing. When you add in flight cxls or misconnects, the failure rate is even higher. A very very small percentage of delays/misconnexs are offered reroutes thru the kiosks. This weekend the kiosk failure rate for all reasons was probably close to 50 percent. Of course the kioks are not totally user friendly when it comes to GOING BACK to previous pages..sometimes you are forced to start over the whole process, several times, especially with vol chgs. or if you go thru the entire process, everything appears ok..and then it states: SORRY CANT FINISH YOUR TRANSACTION SEE AN AGT...totally frustrating..
The other dilemma is how to queue the people most efficiently and orderly. There is limited space to line up people that need to see an agent and some of us prefer to rope off one line for those requiring a tkt agt and queue the potential successful kiosk users around these folks. Usually it works quite well, and everyone is waited on IN ORDER. However lower mgmt likes to come out and say ONE LINE FOR ALL and EVERYONE USE THE KIOSK ...and if it fails they wait there for an agent. They want "No double lines". Problem is there are not enough tkt ctr agents to cover these kiosk failed passengers in the manner which management wants these passengers helped. So what do we do with them? Management wants no lines except the initial line of entering customers. DO we tell the passenger its a free for all and for them to jump in front of the next available agent(or who appears to be anyway)?? How do you keep these people IN ORDER??.. because believe me , they see and comment on who gets waited on before them even though they think THEY were first. And usually they are right. The CARS agents like to rope off the delayed and misconnex in an orderly fashion, as I mentioned earlier, but mgmt says NO. Within 5 minutes after they change it to their style of line, everything goes to he!!...for some reason these folks in charge think we work in the ideal and the abstract, and not in reality. But of course what else is new..In addition you have people leaving the counter to take their bag over to TSA and they are literally tripping over each other as pax flood the kiosks at the same time others are leaving...its a total freeking Zoo.....at several points over the weekend we had 20 plus parties needing an agent, only 2 or 3 agts behind the counter, and several empty kiosks..[12 total in our facility].

Bottom line...what (if anything) works well in your station? And please... don't give me a WHO CARES?

For the time being I still do...has anyone nicknamed these machines "CHAOSKS" yet??

 

[tadjr]

It appears its the same everywhere. We have 12 kiosks, but 3 of them havent worked more than a day at a time since they put them in so we are down to 9. We have 1 line for First Class/Preferred and people who definitely need to see an agent and usually have 1 agent working that line (2 if it gets busy and we have someone extra, ha.) Everyone else is grab the first kiosk. The agents used to send kiosk failures to the other line since they still had 12 kiosks to work with just 2 or 3 agents, but now when someone has a problem they stop and assist and the rest at the kiosk waiting for bags to be tagged just have to wait.
Grandma and Grandpa dont like to use the kiosks to begin with and quite a few people are TSTF. (Too stupid to fly). Not meant as a hit to all customers, but stand by the kiosks sometimes and watch people. Can you read? It doesnt even have to be English since the kiosk has different languages now. They just stare at it. What do I do now? Well it says "How many bags do you want to check?". I really dont know how it could be made more simpler to use other than an agent checking them in so they dont have to think. I know its the intimidation factor of using the machine and until people get used to them its going to be an ongoing problem, but no one seemed to think about that when figuring up staffing issues and how to deal with the problems the kiosk cant solve. The kiosks are there and you will use them.
At least they have eliminated the need for a credit card ALTHOUGH they could make the "TYPE INFORMATION" button a little bigger since people still read "insert card" and stop dead in their tracks instead of reading on.
I saw a memo this past week that our kiosk useage was about 80% in station. I dont know if this includes attempts that failed or just successful checkins.

 

[FM2436]

Interesting article in Aviation Now about passengers bypassing the kiosk for Customer Service agents at the ticket counter.

http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/chan...HECKIN12144.xml

 

[delldude]

somebody call me??

 

[Schatzee]

Interesting article in Aviation Now about passengers bypassing the kiosk for Customer Service agents at the ticket counter.

http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/chan...HECKIN12144.xml

[post="232246"][/post]​

That's not gonna look good on the daily, weekly and monthly reports for the KIOSK numbers. That's why the station managers push soo hard for kiosk usage and the employees that comply are the ones that don't have to use the package below:

 

[Kev3188]

somebody call me??

[post="232281"][/post]​

JJ! What took you so long?!

 

[N628AU]

2 hour plus line in CLT Christmas Day, and those Kiosks that are strewn throughtout the Check-In area that are for check-in only, no baggage check? Guess whaat, only one worked. The others all said temporarily out of service. Could have knocked down the line if (a) they had been working, and (B) the airport staffed appropriately to have an agent working the line giving people the option to check baggage with the skycap and use the non-baggage check kiosk to get a boarding pass to get through security. That two hour line was about 15-20 minutes for my girlfriend when I had her do that.

Kudos to those who worked that day in CLT, they were professional and got the job done well considering the hand they were dealt. Oh yeah, no sight of management or anyone from CCY there to own the problem going on.