Tell Me Again How Unproductive I Am

[tadjr]

I was thinking about how unproductive all of us agents are tonight as I was standing at my computer unable to take the money from the customer in a timely manner. She was wanting to pay for 2 standby fees which is no problem to do. I went to the back office to get the supervisor to let me in the locked cabinet to log out the SSTs that are required to write up a standby charge. Unfortunately the supervisor wasnt in the office, so back out to the front I went. Now I have to find the supervisor who was lost in a mob of people milling about the kiosk machines. I finally found her being queried by two different customers, one wanting to ask her how to do something with the kiosk and the other one who had an online ticketing deal where now she has two tickets in her name and one in her husbands because she did it wrong online and had to buy another ticket for him and wants a refund for one of hers that she made in error. I apologetically interrupt so I can borrow her keys and head back to the locked cabinet in the locked supervisors office to log out the SSTs needed for a simple standby transaction. I head back out to give her the keys and back to my computer area to HAND WRITE a standby ticket. In the meantime the agent next to me gets someone wanting to do the same thing and the process begins again. Meanwhile the line has stopped moving since its just the two of us in the real ticketing line and we're both playing stupid hide and seek games to get a standby ticket done.
Can someone tell me how I can be more productive? How about making them computerized so I dont have to hunt anyone down to get my job done? I spent over 5 minutes trying to get a ticket and hand write them when I could have easily done it in less than 2 minutes in the computer. (And I was lucky the supervisor wasnt away at dinner or down in baggage handling problems there otherwise it would have been longer.) Next time before anyone complains about the agents being unproductive or the lines not moving, you need to remember our best friend is Sabre. There is NO reason why we should be having to hand write these tickets and take so much time to get a simple transaction done. And you wouldnt have to change a contract to get some more productivity out of us!

 

[mweiss]

You sure won't hear any argument outta me on that one!

 

[ktflyhome]

Wow, Tadjr. I learned something new tonight. Thanks for sharing this. I am sorry for your heartache though.

 

[local 12 proud]

yea tadjr thats just another fine example how ineffiecient the day to day operation among many of the carriers is "RAN" by management and the bean counters, but hey it's easier to blame it on labor and slash & burn. gotta pay $$$$$$millions to retain all that quality leadership or else they may go to another company. :down:

 

[mweiss]

Yeah, but did you notice that tadjr had a series of productive solutions instead of simply spewing negative comments all over?

 

[local 12 proud]

guess you try to avoid the truth mweiss, you would'nt perhaps be a management type or a bean counter now would ya?

 

[EightySix]

Tadjr-
why are the sst for the standby fee being handwritten? Misc charges can be done using the misc mask in sabre can't they? Isn't there a place to enter other charges? Sounds like procedures or accounting doesn't even know what tools they have in sabre otherwise these tickets could be automatically generated.

 

[nycbusdriver]

There should be no ticket agent function that requires leaving the computer terminal. NONE. Even paging a supervisor should be done electronically, and the supevisor should have a wireless PDA to authorize transactions from wherever he/she happens to be at the moment. Having procedures such as tadjr pointed out are one of the myraid reasons that the legacy carriers are in so much trouble.

 

[geo1004]

Meanwhile, at the AirTran counter next door, a passenger on the 3 pm flight walks up and asks if they can get on the noon departure instead. The agent sees seats available and says yes, prints the boarding pass and the smiling customer heads home a few hours early to see little Jr. and mommy. No standby fee, no hassles, no line of customers standing in line wondering what's going on.

Aside from wether the standby fee should exsist in the first place, the solution to tadjr's problem is that he/she should be able to process the whole transaction without having to chase down a supervisor to unlock a drawer.

 

[Doc]

Meanwhile, at the AirTran counter next door, a passenger on the 3 pm flight walks up and asks if they can get on the noon departure instead. The agent sees seats available and says yes, prints the boarding pass and the smiling customer heads home a few hours early to see little Jr. and mommy. No standby fee, no hassles, no line of customers standing in line wondering what's going on.

Aside from wether the standby fee should exsist in the first place, the solution to tadjr's problem is that he/she should be able to process the whole transaction without having to chase down a supervisor to unlock a drawer.

Airtran doesn't have hourly flights either so the standby fee in my opinion is justified we match fares to compete bute we fly empty planes so I think we should charge a fee when there is hourly service.

but it seems that our management team has found a way to piss off all of our customers with this stanby fee.

You see that if LUV has a flight between BOS PHL at 10am 2pm and says we can get you there for $29.00 (which by the way only one exsist per flight)
We should have our 10am and our 2pm flight at $29.00 but if you want the flexabilty of hourly service then you should have to pay for it it cost more to fly all day every hour back anf forth.

You know it wouldn't hurt to advertise this little Scenario in the media but we don't have that kind of team.

Have any of you seen the BOS-PHL ads from LUV they are getting ready to kill us.

 

[tadjr]

Tadjr-
why are the sst for the standby fee being handwritten? Misc charges can be done using the misc mask in sabre can't they? Isn't there a place to enter other charges? Sounds like procedures or accounting doesn't even know what tools they have in sabre otherwise these tickets could be automatically generated.

If you use the MISC mask you can collect the money, but there is no exchange coupon to turn in when used and therefore if the customer doesnt get on standby they have nothing to show that they have an unused standby fee. If they are cleared standby confirmed, many agents use this mask to collect the money and be done with it, but the flight was full and there was no guarantee they would get on. Now you've just created more problems down the line when the customer hands an agent the "coupon" they got 6 months from now and want to use it. What do you do then? If they would add an exchange coupon in the MISC mask it would take care of a lot of issues. Standby, nonrev upgrades, US20 upgrades (most agents dont even bother issuing these any more, they just write it on the tickets), etc. 1 little thing like an MISC mask with exchange coupons would solve a world of problems! I also think there should be exchange coupons issued for oxygen and umnr fees. Both of these print on MISC masks with NO exchange coupons so someone COULD show you an old one and say it was for this flight and you wouldnt have any way of knowing if it had been used.
Some agents have been issuing excess baggage coupons (since they have an exchange coupon) to use and cross out excess baggage and write in standby fee or non rev upgrade. This alleviates the problem when there is no supervisor to open the door for you, but is technically not the correct way to account for the services offered.

 

[mweiss]

Oh. Never mind...the issue was flying unconfirmed standby on the earlier flight. Got it.

 

[tadjr]

If you are being cleared directly onto the flight, you can do an MISC mask with no coupon since I know you're getting on the plane right away and dont have to give you anything to use. The problem is when the flight is full and I've done this, what do you have to show the agent at the next flight that you have a standby fee that you havent used? A receipt showing at one time you paid someone for something, but I dont know if its been used or not.... wanna roll the dice?

 

[mweiss]

The annoying part there is that US does the addcollect before waitlisting the customer. How about not charging until the customer clears? Except, of course, that you can't collect the customer's signature until he clears, and thus you run the risk of late departure.

Clearly $25 isn't covering the costs of the program.

 

[thepoohbear]

You have to charge before it clears.There is not enough time to collect it at boarding time.The problem is that the SSTs should be automated.Just like the excess baggage on the misc mask.In that way you would have a cpn to attach.You could also do NRSA upgrds.Trust me it won't be done soon,I put a suggestion in with the company and got doubletalk for an answer.It's these simple things that add up and could be saving us time and making the company $$$$$$