<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by sansbury:
As for the bat-phones to deal with muck-ups, I share the concerns, but quite often I've ended up dealing with gate agents who aren't any better.</font>
Generally, whenever I've had problems, I've found that the phone agents (of any airline) are usually better than the gate/ticketing agents. Maybe its because they don't have to deal with people face-to-face, or maybe they actually have better training on how to access information in the CRS, but I find that generally I can get better solutions to my problems faster via the phone.
Actually, there have been several times I used my mobile phone to contact reservations while waiting in line, and have a reasonable solution to whatever problem I had by the time I get up to the ticketing counters. I find this usually puts the ticket agents in a better mood as well since you're no longer a problem customer to them.
As long as these changes improve customer service, I would be OK with it--the danger is when you actually need one of the few remaining persons left at the counter to help you out because of something that really got screwed up, they'll suddenly no longer be qualified/trained/or even just willing to help you out anymore. And I could definitely see this happening...