steve64

You guys are both right, but talking on different scales.
My experience is with Sabre, but the backbone of all airline CRS systems are the same. With that said...

Within the PNR itself, there is only a log if the PNR was updated. Simply retrieving the PNR, viewing, then doing an IGNORE w/o an update, is not noted in the PNR.
From the Supervisor's veiwpoint, they can not (on the follow-up call), determine who the previous agent was if there were no updates.

Within the TPF Operating System (the system behind CRS systems, I'm a TPF Programmer btw), there is a log of every request that hits the mainframe. The Supervisor would not have access to these and most likely doesn't know they exist.

These are mainly for systems issues. The primary search criteria would be time of day, not passenger name or PNR number. TPF systems typically run at thousands of messages per second so scouring these msg logs for input text that isn't required on every entry (ie: PNR #) would be an offline/batch job. For a Programmer, we use these logs to research dumps (the mainframe issued a "does not compute" so aborted the transaction). We know the time of the dump down to the second so search the input logs for that second to determine the exact msg input (outside of batch jobs, most TPF transactions are measured in micro-seconds ... a single second is a long time)

TommyC80

+1 on this. My company is the same way. Changes are always recorded, but views are not, although I'm sure it could be determined if necessary.

kenn0223

Fair enough, I figured someone who had more than a Wikipedia eduction in audio recording would/could chime in.

I still maintain that UA dosen't record every conversation (as did the agent I spoke to earlier this evening). I don't think they have a reason to that justifies the effort and it's one more thing that they need to support and that could become part of litigation.

edcho

I actually find this to be true as well. I had an MALE agent that was unwilling to help about a month ago.

I had a schedule change that had me arriving into the airport 3 minutes AFTER the door shut on my connecting flight (at SFO and thats with me arriving in Term A going to Term G). I did some research beforehand to make the agent's life easier and presented him with the only routing that works. He came back with the fact that I had to pony up over $2k for the change since my fare class wasn't available. I told him that it should be free since it's a misconnect but also asked him for other "free" options. After typing for 30 minutes, he basically said I was "screwed" (his word) AND that I should just take the flights and misconnect on purpose so that I can get a hotel + food compensation.

I then told him that I was saving money by not having UA go through all those loops. I politely asked if he could ask anyone higher. He put me on hold for another 15-30 minutes and came back to say that there wasn't anything he could do. I then asked if he could call the supervisor desk. He put me on hold and suddenly I got transferred to a FEMALE supervisor (without any acknowledgement from the agent). I had to re-explain the story but the supervisor fixed everything up in 10 minutes!

tuolumne

You're very obviously implying no company would ever have this need simply because your employer didn't do it. any industries create an audit / view trail. Try a hospital for starters. Then move to government agencies. Banks. Need I continue?

fastair

Steve is correct. For those that say that both updating a PNR or just ignoring it have the same effect, your are just completely wrong. A PNR is updated with easily traceable data as long as a change is made (it could be just updating a "received field") and the PNR is ended. If the PNR is not ended (and to end, a change MUST be made,) then it is simply ignored and without doing a huge, labor intensive log of the suspect agent's (or much more labor if the agents cannot be narrowed down to a single suspect) transactions for a given time period. This is NOT something that can just be done by any supervior at any time, but requires some other software or IT people to presen the logs to a supervisor.

The same goes for "every call is recorded". Not the case, as I stated earlier. An agent off probation is not going to have his/her calls monitored or recorded. Workers have rights that are often bargained for, and just because something is possible, does not mean at it is permitted. Becuase your (anyone's) company may do this, does not mean that the agents have agreed to this in a collective bargaining agreemet.

Annecdotal theories of what you think is done, and what actually is done with your company or your IT systems does not mean that every company and every database operates the same way.

How many of you who do not work front line labor have every one of your keystrokes audited and every one of your phone calls recorded? Sure, it is possible to do so, but I but most of you don't have it done, so spare me the "How could thy not do this?!?!", as many of you would object to it being done to you, and most of you don't bargain collectivly for work rules, but accept whatever "the man" tells you is the policy.

Power to the people!

StingWest

Still though, to me as someone with lots of years in call center technology, it seems extremely likely that a record exists (and is conveniently accessible to management) linking the calling telephone number, that frequent flyer number that you say or key in, which agent the ACD sent the call to, and what time it was. It also seems very likely that there is a clear record of who was logged in to that station at the time.

We customers (who also want to be "empowered people" by the way) are simply asking for the ability for United management, by using repeated complaints to track down the bad apples , to drum these bad CS agents out. Hopefully management has not bargained this ability away, whether calls are recorded or not.

GDaoV

+1

The telephony (replace tele with UA) systems used today at large call centers are highly integrated with backend systems. They know exactly who called, when they called, who they spoke to, how the conversation was, and if they chose to, what was conversed.

Any Fortune 500 company using a financially critical system that does not have a historical trace of what was viewed and/or modified is begging for trouble.

PTahCha

... And the phone agent's phone stats would go into the dumps. Phone agents are measured on their productivity, and they have a specific quota of either x number of calls per hour, or complete transaction with x minutes. Have you considered that it may be a technical glitch that sent the call into infinite loop of hold music and he wasn't able to grab the call back?

serfty

I forgot to mention, that all the recorded conversations are analyzed electronically for emotive keys (tone, 'high volume oratory' etc.) and those that fall outside predetermined parameters may trigger flags for review.

LaserSailor

Another internet gem....

FlyWorld

In ten years, my best call experiences have consistently been with male agents, and all of the horrific calls I've had have been with female agents.

BilligCharlie

Having been a part of installing one of Cisco's recording solutions, QM, I can tell you that the storage requirements are astronomical. Not only are we talking about the ability to track the calls and hold on to them for up to 30 or 60 days, you also have to take into account survivability. The systems that are setup to record would go to a SAN which have RAID setup with multiple redundant hard drives for survivability should drives die. With the amount of calls and agents I don't see United doing this based on the cost alone.

Most companies that do deploy this are surprised by the calculations and cost to record every call and hold on to those recordings for X number of days.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voic...de/qm85igc.pdf

Page 31

Sarfa33

I know for a fact that at least one major international airline does record ALL phone calls coming into and going out of their call centers and holds those recordings for 90 days. These recordings are reviewed periodically by management for performance evaluation purposes and can -- and are -- regularly pulled up to address customer service issues when a complaint is received.

The cost is high, but the ability to tell a customer that, in fact, the phone agent did NOT say what you are claiming they did, and that the company has phone recordings to prove it, is priceless.

-S

FLYDCA

There really is no such thing as a 1K desk. That was abolished after the merger. If you are lucky you get a general purpose Premier line.