I agree that that's the current message from management. If you read books on excellent customer service, they stress "empowering" the people who face customers to resolve problems, even if that means supporting them when they bend the rules a little or make extra concessions for important customers. While Elite fliers may get priority in rebooking when flights are cancelled (and sometimes I doubt even that since as an AA Plat they could do no better than put me on the same flight 24 hours later in March of this year), I really don't think the gate agents or the FAs can do much with the constraints they've got. How can you offer food after 3 hours on the tarmac when no food was loaded to begin with?

Having conceded above on one of your points- So what are the unions doing to ensure that their members are empowered to treat the customer right and resolve problems as they arise?

in my grandfather's day, Unions were what saved employees. Today it's in the opinion of many that they stop progress and hurt both business and employees!

>They (unions) provide a voice for people
>who don't have any say in the organisation

I agree - But I also feel the unions harm employees, but not giving a 'voice' for good employees.

My sister, for example, quit her union job once she saw there was no opportunity to excel at her job in order to progress. "Slackers" (her word) with seniority got promoted above her strictly based on seniority, regardless of how hard she worked.

If the union is looking out for the employees, why wasn't it looking out for my sister and putting a mechanism in place where her hard work could be rewarded?

Another example: My wife's assistant is in a union. My wife would like to be able to give her a raise, improve her vacations etc. in compensation for the fact the assistant works harder and smarter than her colleagues. My wife can't, due to the collective agreement.

If there's a wildcat strike, my wife's assistant is expected to walk out and lose a day's pay. How does that help her out?

I'll speak from an Australian perspective here, I think they trying to maintain worker's wages and conditions. The 'race to the bottom' (wages and conditions) currently occurring in many CS roles means that the focus is on preservation of these benefits with empowerment issues a poor last. This is to the ultimate detriment of customers who, ultimately are the reason that a business makes money.


In AUS seniority isn't as big an issue as the US. Here promotions are generally given on merit, you have to apply and be the best person for that role. Of course cronyism occurs but there is a chance to work hard and get ahead rather than just doing your time.

customer service
 

I work for an airline, and I'm sorry to admit I have had days where I have been less than pleasant to a passenger. No excuses, we're human and it happens. After several days of poor weather and flight delays and passengers who show up with way over the accepted baggage allowance, and come 15 minutes before the flight, can't find their identifcation, and expect a whole plane load of passengers to misconnect while they go home and look for it....lets just say we are only human and can get a little cranky.

I have been treated poorly by passengers, more times than I can even count. I've been called names, threatened, blamed and harrassed for things like weather, mechanical problems with the aircraft, and baggage that was lost or mishandled in a city 1500 miles from here. We're the ones who can help passengers, yet we are often treated like dogs. Sometimes we bark back.

The one comment made in this forum, that airline employees are "no better than fast food workers" may give you some idea as to how most employees in service industries are viewed, and subsequently treated, by the customers they serve. The person behind the counter or checkout stand is somehow not human, or viewed as an actual person with a family or or life, and the assumption is that they are uneducated boobs that cannot do any better. While that may sometimes be the case, I would ask that you not be so quick to judge. Most people do not look at us--they look right through us. Many of us are professionals with college degrees believe it or not, and we do this out of love of the industry or love of travel.

The next time an airline agent is rude (and yes, some of them are just .....es for no apparent reason--just like in any business) look around and see what is going on around that person. Is it chaotic? Maybe she is on her last nerve and if one more person asks her when the fog will lift, she will have a meltdown right at the counter. Maybe you are standing there with way more luggaqe than a normal person needs, or she just got off the phone with someone who wants to know if her flight next Tuesday will be on time, or maybe the guy ahead of you showed up at the counter 15 minutes before his flight that is already boarding and thinks SHE needs to somehow hold the flight for him because he's "an executive miles member" which somehow makes it OK to delay a flight and cause 100 other passengers to misconnect downline....

It is also true that some airlines do not have time to do much customer service training. There are hundreds of hours of complex ticketing training, FAA required training, security training etc. that it takes nearly a year to become even remotely comfortable with this job and at least 3 years to have any kind of proficiency. Many people don't make it that long. It's very difficult.

High pay by itself is not a motivator, but...

Low pay certainly effects the quality of the applicant pool from which you hire. It becomes much more difficult to find those who will excel.

Pay cuts and work rule concessions certainly sucks the enthusiasm out of an employee group.

The real problem that I see in the airlines, and other customer service industries, is that management doesn't provide adequate training and follow up. They expect the employees to provide great services because they wrote a sentence in the employee manual saying that they should. Employees need training, procedures, and resources to provide great service and follow up to identify and correct any problems. Management must create a work atmosphere where nothing less is acceptable. That's difficult to do, especially with tens of thousands of customer contact employees, and few management teams are able to pull it off.

I think that this poster hit the nail on the head. The system is overloaded and cannot properly handl irregular operations. And there is not sufficient staffing to handle operations, again particulary when things go wrong. And most fliers are not on FT and have no or little clue about how the "system works." And many of the ground crew are at breaking points when things go wrong and management just collects their bonus and put out press releases about the millions more in costs they plan to cut (in other words not enough resources allowed in the system to account for irregular operations). It truly has become for many domestic airlines a race to the bottom.

Tarabunga, first, welcome to FT. We hope you stick around! :)

We just had another thread with similar comments from a flight attendant. I'm sorry, but I think you're both wrong. It is never appropriate or excusable to be rude to a passenger because you're having a bad day -- particularly when the passenger to whom you're rude is not the one responsible for it. I'm a frequent flier -- I'm not rude to ground or flight personnel, I know the rules and follow them, I don't demand that others be inconvenienced for my sake. I treat people courteously, and I expect to be treated courteously. I don't care if you're having a bad day -- it's not something I should have to take into account unless I'm the cause.

I've encountered airline personnel who, while polite, seem stressed. I'll always make a sympathetic comment which, usually, starts a brief conversation going in which I empathize, after which the airline person seems a little happier, and I do, too. That's never a problem. However, I've also been barked at, treated rudely, insulted, etc. for no other reason than the person was having a bad day, but not because of anything I did. My response will always be an icy smile, a request for the person's name, and then a request to speak to a supervisor. I am a customer, I am not an inconvenience, an annoyance or an interruption. I've paid a significant amount of money for my ticket, for which I expect to be treated professionally and courteously.

I have bad days too. I would never dream of taking them out on my clients -- that would be professional suicide, as I soon wouldn't have any clients left. Also, remember this. I may be having a bad day because of your airline. I may have had to wait hours for my flight because your airline can't manage capacity controls, or has stretched its fleet so thin that delays in other cities impact my departure, or because, by trying to save money by minimizing staffing,crew has misconnected. This is due to your airline's mismanagement, and not my fault or responsibility. I may have been stuck in a middle seat between two overweight individuals who should have been denied boarding but a lazy GA decided to make it my problem instead of hers. I may have had a broken seat that wouldn't recline because your airline can't be bothered with non-safety related maintenance, or because turn-around times are so short that repairs couldn't be made. I may never have gotten my beverage because a lazy FA was more interested in reading her magazine in the galley than responding to the call button which she decided was "for emergencies only." I may have spent the last three days wearing the same clothes because your airline delayed or lost my bag.

All of this happens. And, because you are an agent of your employer, you are the visible face of my dissatisfaction with your airline. And I still won't be rude to you, though I won't be particularly happy and cheery if, for example, I've been trying for the last 7 hours to get between cities that are only a 1-hour flight apart. However, I absolutely, positively will not tolerate being treated rudely by you. My profession happens to be quite stressful. If I couldn't take the stress, I'd find something else to do. I don't see why your profession should be an exception to this rule.

Sorry if this sounds negative and, of course, when I use "you" in this post, I don't mean you personally. Please remember, though, that virtually all the members of FlyerTalk are experienced frequent fliers, i.e. we are the people who don't cause airline personnel to have a bad day. You need to direct your displeasure to your employer, who has decided to adopt a business model that focuses on attracting the bargain-fare, casual-flying Gomers and Kettles who get in our way as much as they get in yours.

yes I understand that GAs and FAs should not be rude. But it has become a dysfunctional, broken business and to expect GAs and FAs (who are human beings and not perfect) take this in stride is a little naive. My heart goes out to these poor GAs and what they go through and how they are treated. Too many times it is a rude, overbearing pax expecting miracles that start the problem. I find treat the GAs and FAs with dignity and respect, even in difficult situations (like my 11 hour flight from JFK to DCA last Sunday, was suppose to be only 1.15 hours) and you get same in return. I actually made that poor AE flight attendant, how looked like holy h..ll because of the day she had put in, laugh at the end of the long ordeal.

Newyorkgeorge, I sympathize with airline workers, too. The bottom line, though, is the airline industry is a customer service industry. No customer service business will thrive if its employees believe it's excusable to treat customers abusively, particularly when the customer who is the target of the abuse did nothing to deserve it. If that's naive, then I'm naive.

I'm with Tarabunga on this one. I don't think there are too many flight attendants or ground personnel that think it is somehow excusable to "abuse" a customer because some other customer has been rude to them. Its a question of being human, and the airline industry has degenerated into an inhuman cattle call -- especially for those of us who fly steerage more often than not -- that tests the patience of the most customer friendly customer service oriented in the business as well as the customers themselves. Its no use pretending that the circumstances are other than what they are and that under these circumstances someone isn't on occasion going to flip their wig. I know I would if I had some grease ball in a stinking tank top barking at me because he couldn't sit next to his wife. (The counter person exercised remarkable restraint in this instance, if you ask me.)

I'm not in customer service and if I were, the airline business is the last place I would work. I don't know about the rest of you all, but I see nasty, brutish, crude, rude, insensitive, thoughtless behavior every day in the normal course of events and certainly among the flying public. You can assign blame wherever you'd like, but in many parts of this country at least, total self absorption is the norm. I'm from a generation and place where you were taught to treat the janitor just like you'd treat the Queen -- or risk getting smacked in the head. I've come to accept the reality (reality, we all succumb to it sooner or later) that a bargain basement price for a round trip coast to coast ticket doesn't entitle me to too much: not to getting there on time, not to food, not to drinks, pillows and sometimes not even to the relentless blandishments of an impeccably attired air hostess/host. (My very first trip on a jet was age 9 with my family JFK to LAX first class on a TWA 707 where the gate person pulled a velvet rope aside and at the other end of the jetway, the stewardess stood in the door: hat, gloves, one foot behind the other, arms outstretched and smiling- fabulous; but I digress.)

Nastiness is the zeitgeist and we all suffer for it. (Though I suppose if I were paying $10,000 a pop for a ticket, I would indeed want someones lips planted firmly on my buns, discreetly of course.) On the occasion when I've been able to upgrade or used miles to fly in a premium cabin, it is true that American and to a lesser degree European crews and ground staff tend to perform their duties perfunctorily while Asian crews tend to be gracious (though sometimes it feels completely fake).

Of course airline employees should not be rude to customers, paying or otherwise. They should be friendly and solicitous. In years of flying I've only had one real incident of a rude customer service person and of course I got the usual 10,000 miles credited to my account after I wrote a letter. But I suspect the level of customer service we long for is never going to reappear given the way the business is structured now and the culture we're submerged in. Folks want and, more importantly, need cheap travel. So they get cheap, hectic, harried unpleasant travel. Security lines, overbooking, tight margins, low fares. All of the things that conspire in the race to the bottom make the airlines probably the last place you're going to get consistently top notch customer service. I have a better experience when I deposit a couple hundred bucks at Wells Fargo than I do at an airport customer service counter or on a plane. And it doesn't surprise, or particularly bother me. I think the lady at the end of the jetway with the gloves and beatific gaze is gone the way of the dinosaurs.