mmack

Good to know. Seems to be hit or miss now

tcdtcd

NEW INFO TODAY (3/3) from ORD B6:

There was a mid management guy and an agent standing out in front of the boarded up agent area as I was exiting.

I said to the management guy, “terrible decision to eliminate this desk and agents!”
He was very apologetic and said “we’ve heard our FFs and we’re reversing the decision. Give us a few weeks. We will have both options available going forward.”
I told him that was a good call and gave them kudos for recognizing/reversing a major error.

lilpisher

This is great news. Was at ORD late last week and moved from B6 —> C Lounge (flight was delayed as I was walking over to C), Asked the agent at check in if she had any info on boarding time since it was mechanical, She called down to the gate to get updated info, protected me on the next flight “just in case”, and found me a bit later to give me an update on status. Was thinking about this thread during that delay..

goodeats21

Really hope this is true...thanks for posting!

lincolnjkc

Additional data point - "doing a little remodeling"

I have 5 hours to kill the the B6 club today (if you see a business-casual guy with a United face mask near the bar, say hi ) and the door in the wall was open so I was peeking to see what was going on (no visible changes). An agent came out of the door and asked if I needed help, I replied that I was good today but really disappointed to see the wall since the agents are life savers. She asked me to tell her manager who was standing near by (female, initials G.W. so not the same manager mentioned a few posts up). Reiterated that the wall made me sad, agents are lifesavers -- she emphasized that this is "temporary" and "doing a little remodeling" but agents are floating around the lounge if I need any help in the meantime (indeed I've seen at least 3 besides the ones at the entry desk). There was a soft sell for agent on demand to which I replied I much prefer having a live agent a few feet away.

There were a few more points but I don't want to get too specific; in short I got the vibe the "we've heard our FFs" mentioned a few posts ago was a "we really underestimated how much our club members want live local humans"

iluv2fly

I was there last week.
I talked to one of the agents and she said that they are bringing ONE agent back to help passengers as they did before. They are told to encourage all pax who need help to use the virtual agent.

goodeats21

Really glad to hear this, and thanks for checking it out. If this keeps up, we may need to revise the thread title...thankfully!

NikoLGA

This has spread into the concourses too. In IAD, Concourse A customer service center is no more. The real estate is unchanged, but it's become a billboard for Agent on Demand. Funny thing is, all of the outstations that have customer service centers (think airports that are not hubs but big enough to have United Clubs) still have fully staffed service centers, probably because they are coveted positions, given they have comfy seats for the agents perusal.

PTahCha

There are similar signs in MCO and EWR, so it's been rolled out slowly. Maybe this was a work-around for the unvaccinated work force?

FLYMSY

“Agent on Demand” is not a service that I will use. If there is an issue at the airport, I want face to face service.

HNLbasedFlyer

The unvaccinated workforce is back to work at UA

SS255

Who else cowers in fear every time this thread gets bumped to the top?

EWR764

But thousands of senior frontline employees took the aggressive early-out packages offered around the time of the pandemic, and many of these experienced employees staffed these desirable positions, which also required special qualification (CS counters, clubs, GS). UA still hasn't caught back up in terms of hiring/training, and it's questionable whether they ever will.

HNLbasedFlyer

They may not want to catch up. Regardless, I was just addressing the unvaccinated are back working

lincolnjkc

This is something that various UA employees I've talked to seem to have trouble understanding. I had one mid-senior-ish type ("Regional Manager") try convincing me that AOD is "the same" as or even "better than" having a staffed CSC or agents in club.
They may be able to preform the same actions, and they may be as qualified -- indeed the "same" but it feels wildly impersonal to try talking to someone on a mobile device rather than being in the same place breathing the same oxygen and able to flip a monitor around and show what they're seeing and -- more importantly -- knowing you have their full and undivided attention, that the call won't drop, your battery won't die, etc.

Maybe part of this is the horrendous taste the "chat" feature left in my mouth when a simple request to fix a reservation that was out of sync due to an upgrade took several 'agents' over 4 hours in two different chat sessions (with at least 2 of the agents just ghosting me mid-chat leaving me to start over with a new agent because apparently they can't see the history) -- part of that time delay was undoubtedly because they were serving multiple chats at the same time. (After the first chat failed I should have just called reservations but I really wanted to see if that was a one-off or if what I wanted could actually be accomplished via chat.)

I can see one potential benefit this has is in IROPS balancing demand and availability. Without AOD if you have a situation in, say, ORD and 5 agents in the CSC... you have 5 overwhelmed agents and that's all you have to work with. With AOD, you might have 5 agents in ORD but also 5 agents in LAX who are bored because it's a sunny day and all is going to plan, so you've doubled service throughput without any actual changes in staffing or cost. There are also potential advantages for non-English or limited-English speakers being matched with agents who can more effectively communicate with them in a preferred language. But AOD should be a customer option from a menu of options, not a replacement for in-person service from a local human.

Without staffed CSCs or club service desks, UA may think there going to force AOD but rather it means I just have to roam the concourse/club to find and ambush a random CSR if something goes wrong. I don't like doing that, UA shouldn't want me doing that, and it's certainly not why I pay for a club membership.