United757

"This is Susan, who am I speaking with?"

meej

I had a Phoenix based agent on the phone yesterday who spent 40 min working to change a ticket booked with companion cert and gold upgrade certs from ANC-ORD to ANC-SJO. She was wonderful and kept apologizing for the wait, checking back every few minutes when i was on hold to keep me posted.

ou81two

Phone staff are always good. Their management is hit or miss though. They don't seem to get educated on systemwide problems such as the recently resolved upgrade issue that screwed a whole bunch of people out of upgrades.

becca1

If you ever get really great service calling the call center ask for the kudos line. It's basically a voice mailbox for the employee's supervisor. It goes into the employee's file and they get entered into drawings for prizes. It will make their day ^

bnj999

I've also had great experience with phone agents at Alaska... until yesterday...

I think I must have been unlucky yesterday to have such a horrible agent. This was an partner awards MVP line agent who I called because I received an email notice of a partner award change. To save everyone the long story, she was both confused and confusing, repeated stating that I wasn't going to the UK anymore (when this was a flight into Mexico that was cancelled on Aeromexico), even after I corrected her. She would stop short in the middle of confirming the itinerary, and then suddenly I would be on hold. After 45 minutes of this craziness, the ticket was eventually resolved, but it was a TRULY painful experience.

I did write an email to Alaska, but I'm not hopeful for any response.

Snowdevil

That only works for the SEA Reservations office; they had an extra, unused phone line so they put it to work for that purpose.

Agents in BOI and PHX Reservations don't have a dedicated "kudos line" like SEA does, however if asked they'll gladly give you their supervisor's work e-mail address to send your comments, positive or negative. And they always respond.

Jimgotkp

For the most part, I've had good experiences with the call centers as well. However, I had a bad experience two months ago when trying to upgrade my flight due to the whole upgrade issue. The supervisor was completely clueless with the most basic information (check-in times, upgrade waitlists, etc.).

CRAZ8

I recently had to change a LAX-SEA flight due to a 4+ hour delay leaving Fiji. This included a $99 Companion ticket, all upgraded with miles.

We called the US from Fiji and the person who helped us explained that we'd lose the upgrade and the miles would be put back in our account. Sad, but not surprising.

As we watched the app to see the flights change, we noticed that we were still in first after the update! Even though I wasn't on the phone, they managed to transfer my upgrade as well as get us seats on the flight.

Luckily we caught this FJ delay early enough, as the people sitting in front of us out of NAN ended up being standby for our AS flight and never made it on the plane!

Except for the $4.20/minute for the phone call, this was a quick and painless experience.

JimH64

I did not know about the Kudos Line. As an MVPG we used to have an Experssion of Thanks, we could submit. Now we have Alaka Listens, but only available the day of flight or later.
I ran into this when trying to complement Linda M. She was awesome and really represents the Alaska spirit. I had to send an email to the mileage plan to give kudos.
I followed it up with an email regarding the trouble I had to go through to submit an Expression of Thanks. I did get a response from Brian Behunin Director of Customer Inteligence and Analytics. He defended the Alaska Listens site. He also explained that I could still send a note to the mileage plan email if it did not fit within the Alaska Listens format. I liked the old format for recognizing the employees that go above and beyond. Sometimes, I don't have a comment for some of the areas that they request feedback in the survey.
Keep up the good work, but make it easy for us to provide feedback.
J

ctporter

I had amazing service from Nikki the other day trying to work through a change (had to move a flight to one week later). During the call we got cut off, SHE CALLED me back! Not just once, but THREE times! I did send in emails to Alaska cares and her supervisor (I asked for it) I even got a reply back, so I knew she really was recognized