Delta Air Lines wants to know if they can save money staffing check-in counters with agents for elite travelers. For years they’ve pushed general passengers to self-service kiosks, while maintaining full service especially for their most frequent customers.
They’re surveying their customer focus group, made up generally of a group of elite customers, about whether they use kiosks in areas outside of air travel, what features they want from kiosks, and whether the pandemic has made them more open to a shift to kiosks (less human interaction).
First they want to know which you prefer – staff or kiosks. I think this is a bit binary. It often depends on the staff (some are friendly and helpful while some are not) and depends on the kiosk. Some are a good user experience – quick and efficient – and others put too much of a burden on the end user. Often that’s because people can adjust to the needs of the customer, while computers are often programmed to send everyone through the same one size fits all funnel. Why are there no kiosks for expert users?
Why would you find yourself using a kiosk, if you do?
Does the pandemic make you more open to kiosks? I think this is a bit of an odd question. There’s a shift towards less human interaction among some dimensions. But when you’re traveling you’re already in an airport, which frequently lacks good ventilation or the same air filtration of an aircraft. And while Covid spreads primarily through aerosols not fomites we’re more attuned to germs generally and don’t tell me these are properly cleaned all the time.
What are the kiosk features you care most about? In some ways this puts the cart before the horse. I’d do more things on a kiosk that was really efficient, in expert mode, and didn’t make me go through too many decision trees or acknowledgement screens.
Finally they want to know how to get you to be more willing and likely to use a kiosk because the end goal is to reduce counter staffing costs that assist frequent flyers.
I almost never use a kiosk. I use the mobile app for boarding passes. I use a priority line for checking bags, or if I can’t get on an earlier flight without seeing a person. When there’s a paper certificate of some kind that inhibits check-in I need to see a person (and please don’t ask me to start with a kiosk in order to qualify me to see a person, I know when I need to see a person).
American’s kiosks are too slow, and take too long, to accomplish simple tasks. There are too many screens to go through. No line for a kiosk takes longer than waiting for 3 people in line ahead of me when I need to check bags. I’ll use a kiosk when there are 4+ ahead of me. But a kiosk experience that’s better than an elite agent experience isn’t something I expect to see in the near- or even medium-term.
Do you use a kiosk when you travel? What would get you to use a kiosk more? And do you care if there’s reduced elite line staffing if the kiosks actually did the job as intended for the audience in a user-appropriate way?
Given that Delta has rolled out facial recognition for some services and Spirit allows you to drop a bag without talking to a person, there has to be a continual rethinking of the value of human interactions.
There will always be a need for a very few rare transactions that a machine (either an app or kiosk) cannot do but airlines as well as other merchants work hard to automate what can be automated as they justify the cost of maintaining processes that cannot be automated.
All you need to do is look at the percentage of people that use self checkout at stores relative to a traditional attended line to see that Americans like to do things themselves.
I appreciate that Delta is asking and is willing to improve their automation or recognize that there is a certain percentage of customers that want to talk to a person, even if it means waiting for a clerk and, in the case of ticketing by phone, paying a surcharge to do so.
Delta may very well find that some of their ideas don’t fly with real customers and that is a far better position to be in rather than impose something that they think needs to happen only to find people don’t like it. I am betting that most Americans will gravitate to more self-service tools if they are capable of replicating the same functions that humans do.
When the baggage tag the kiosk spits out is properly marked as priority or priority tags are available by the kiosk, I will reconsider using the kiosk. And I like the idea of an expert mode a lot – only make it available for elites who have to pre-select it in their user profile. This will keep FOTSGs from accidentally using it while providing frequent travelers with the expediency they need. There’s no need to keep asking me if I want to change seats or if I’m a veteran/military. ATMs save your preferences – there’s no reason airport kiosks can’t.
I agree in many self-service interactions with airlines there are far too many both acknowledgement screens and ancillary services fee screens. Take the online check-in flow for example. Southwest allows you to check-in with only 1-2 clicks and then you have your boarding pass. Other airlines have pages and pages of screens, and no bypass or quick-check option. Delta tried an automated option where you got your boarding pass automatically but it did not take in to account if you needed to change your flight. Similarly I don’t think JetBlue’s automation allows you to cancel a TrueBlue award online without calling in. In many cases with Delta if your ticket have been reissued from e-credits the system will not let you cancel it via self-service and now they have a no show policy where you lose the value of your ticket if you don’t cancel. So they have a very very long way to go! Back to Southwest I only remember 1 PNR where I could not cancel the ticket in 10-20 years of flying. Also the screens load faster on Southwest’s change/cancel flow especially compared to JetBlue.
I am an AA elite and I use the mobile app when I can. I never check luggage.
Most of my travel is out of the US, and, unfortunately, the app has not worked well for me on international travel, even when paired with VeriFLY, forcing me to check in with an agent. I would always prefer self service.
Agree with @Bill.
80% of the time, it’s a mobile app. 20% of the time, it’s great to have a human staffing desk.
Well before you get to TSA check-in.
That has a shorter line.
That has people in line (on BOTH sides of the line) that know what they are doing.
Agents are there to ensure a frictionless transaction and are a value to the airline.
And don’t even think that CHARGING elites for a transaction with an agent. We already pay more for flying (Deta, AA, United) for our loyalty experience.
If the agent is dumb, slow, and ugly, a kiosk is better. If the agent is attractive, fast and smart, the kiosk is worse.
If I still have to stand in another line to hand the bag off to a human, then I see no benefit to using the kiosk for checkin.
These questions are not designed to determine WHETHER to go to kiosks. These questions are designed to JUSTIFY the decision they’ve already made to go to kiosks. One more example of “we listened to our customers and this is what they want” crap.
@ Tim — Don’t let most people using self-checkout at the grocery store fool you into thinking they actually prefer it. Companies have basically forced customers into a choice between waiting forever for a human or self-service. Ever since they reviewed security footage of my self-scanning right in front of me, I will be waiting in line for a person. They can kiss my ass if they think I am going to perform menial labor for free and then effectively be accussed of shoplifting because I don’t scan and bag my groceries according to the instructions of their stupid machine. I dont go to the grocery store to bag my own groceries.
@thing1 is spot on.
The limiting factor to all of this is the ability to handle IROPS. Passengers, including experienced elite passengers all suffer when there are agents to assist when things go wrong.
So basically ensure we have an efficent but super fragile system that goes to hell as soon as problems strike and machine says NO / IRROPs.
One of DL’s advantages is the agents are more empowered than at competitors to use their initiative to solve customer problems. Thats out the window if no agent can be found
@Gene is right and I can prove it. MCO is my home airport. When I fly AA, I almost always pay for domestic business class and invariably have checked bags. At MCO, using the AA kiosk is MUCH, MUCH FASTER than queueing for an elite agent. The AA cattle class bag drop agents are a model of efficiency and in good humor in my experience and the hassle of attaching the bag tag outweighs the 20+ minute wait in the elite queue to have a human complete the entire process. Not once, as an experienced traveler who quickly can find a vacant kiosk, has the AA bag drop process at MCO taken me more than 15 minutes, even when the vestibule is mobbed. I’m usually on my way to the security checkpoint within about 7 minutes. Delta needs to take care not to deviate too far from what it has now, lest the elite queue to speak with a human become the slow lane, as it is with AA at MCO.
I prefer seeing a pleasant check-in counter agent when flying with Delta Airlines or American Airlines. During a COVID pandemic, airport kiosk touchscreens are touched or fondled by thousands of snot-covered infected fingers, promoting the pathogenic transmission of disease before you board the aircraft. Passengers are not required to touch a check-in counter agent to receive their boarding passes.
Gene right on! If I wanted to scan groceries I’d get a job there!
I notice at my local Austin HEB it’s mostly millennials using self check out (and smiling about it) and mostly the greatest generation (me, though there’s nothing great about me) using full service registers and looking over at the millennials and shaking our heads…..
The problem with all of this automation is that there isn’t a useful backup system. If a computer crashes you are SOL. If something goes wrong you have to track down a human to fix it, IF you can find one and the line isn’t huge. If everything is ok, then usually it is good but sadly this is an imperfect world.
In this case this may not be true but companies realize when things are automated and people can’t complain, when things go wrong, people often don’t even fight to get their money back because they don’t want to deal with the hassles of emails (and don’t get responses), or waiting hours on hold on the phone. A good percent of people simply walk away basically giving the company incentive to continue the poor service. About the only thing that kind of works is to dispute it with your credit card company.
This is what happens when a robot is cheaper than a human. Just got to the Norway, Denmark and Sweden. They have had automated security checkpoints, lounge access checkpoints, and even boarding gates for more than 5 years. Same for McDonald’s in continental Europe. They have had self-order kiosks for like 10 years. Hotels have had self-serve wine machines (they charge your room with a swipe of the room key) for a while now. Fairfield is trying to eliminate breakfast and a staffed front desk by shifting to vending machine and front desk/check-in kiosks. At some point, government will need to subsidy companies to hire humans.
Tim I don’t think it’s people preferring self check outat all. It’s when they see half the checkout area converted to self checkout and the new area has three times as many registers as full service so likes are shorter (despite many people needing assistance from the attendance/guard) plus the full service registers are NOT all open they think “well I’ll try self check.”
They are being guided to make
“the right choice” the company wants like the questions Gary listed.
If I’m traveling solo, I never check a bag and just check in on the app.
With family, I typically have multiple items to check and prefer using an agent. I generally buy first domestically and usually use AA instead of UA as I find the check in process less stressful. AA typically has agents ready to help at first class checkin, vs UA I have to navigate endless kiosk screens while trying to balance children, car seats, luggage, etc even at the priority checkin. In my view one of the benefits of first class should be a quick and easy check in.
When i switched from United (after 2 million miles), to Delta, one of the things that I appreciated was not having to use the kiosks. I find the agents to be friendly and the line for elites rarely long. I hope they don’t make this change.
Diamond is right.
Automation exists because it is cheaper than humans.
Some people do prefer to use self-service tools. Others are forced
Unless there is no waiting for a cashier, I would rather use self-checkout and I can assure you that w/ less than a dozens items, I can do it faster than even a one minute wait for a clerk.
Other people do the calculus but more and more passengers are moderate to very tech savvy because that is the world in which we live.
If you are accurately checking out, there is no more reason to fear the cameras and scales at self-checkout any more than there is reason for a teller to fear having cameras all over their workspace.
and, yes, backups are an issue but no less so than for every other aspect of airline operations.
Delta is asking; presumably they know some people will have a preference all the way to the point that some will strongly resist. Their point, just like any company, is to limit the amount of people that will walk away and go somewhere else.
there is no reason to believe there will not be a growth in the use of automation at Delta or any other airline.
Why would anyone ever want to deal with another human being when they don’t have to?
Tim Dunn: darn you with your logic!
Shane: people are nice to me because I am nice to them…..
As a long time Plat Pro with American with exclusively pays for Domestic FC and literally REFUSE to use those kiosks and tag my own bag. Nope. Never.
A few years back Southwest went to an entirely Kiosk model at TPA and I was shocked to wait about 15 minutes to reach one at a relatively slow part of the day, the line wasn’t even that long. At least 2/3’s of the machines were unavailable for use and I complained via mail. The response was that a 15 minute wait to drop bags was reasonable and that 1 employee could only handle 2 machines at a time, hence many weren’t in use. Seemed like an unbalanced trade-off to me. Perhaps union work rules?
No kiosk knows the intangible of customer service.
It’s not just the airlines, it’s everywhere. Stores, banks, etc. are all driving customers to online or self-service transactions so they can reduce labor costs. Then, if an irregularity arises, it’s 30 to 60 minutes on the phone . . . because even call centers are understaffed. There’s no one on “the floor” to help customers.
To paraphrase Josef Stalin: the loss of any customer service job is a tragedy; the loss of 10,000 customer service jobs is a statistic. Senior managers are managing by statistics and are isolated / insulated from the customer experience.
Heck no. If I paid for a first class ticket (or at earned elite status) I don’t want to use a machine…. I want the airline to do the check in work
Heck no. If I paid for a first class ticket (or at earned elite status) I don’t want to use a machine…. I want the airline to do the check in work
Delta Platinum and AA Platinum here: per what I read previous in the internet settles the issue so I would never touch one of those things
the self check-in kiosk
The dirtiest place in an airport is actually the self check-in kiosk, which contained an average of 253,857 CFU, far above the runner ups. (One specific self check-in kiosk was even found with over 1 million CFU!)Mar 14, 2019
Depends on the airport, but we have found the counter agents at the separate check-in/bag drop area for SkyPriority/Virgin Atlantic Upper Class passengers at JFK T4 (far right side on departures level) to be pleasant & efficient – while eschewing the few self-service kiosks that were installed in the waiting area (towards the end, just before turning right for the area where the SP agents are [when last used pre-pandemic]).
Have used kiosks for flights on other airlines (United, jetBlue), too.
They’re OK; but at big, congested airports like Delta/JFK T4, very much prefer the SkyPriority section & the top notch agents there.
By contrast, 2-days ago for our EWR-RDU flight, the Premier Access check-in/bag drop at Newark had a line so long (the UA agent said at least 45 mins wait) that they urged us to let a skycap (who was nearby) check our bags if we wanted to save time (yes, that line was incredibly long; literally to the end of the rope lines) – if we didn’t mind tipping the skycap, that is, which we did.
So, we used the roped off kiosk/bag drop & were on our way in a matter of minutes.
But…it was kinda off putting that the Premier Access desks had a line so long it looked & felt like the coach/economy class lines at JFK back in the day between 5 – 9pm when there’d be 747s & other jumbo jets practically as far as the eye could see lined up at the gates!
My wife and I have paid first class tickets from PHX to DEN on United a few weeks ago. The only choice was kiosks. A few of the kiosks were marked “Premier Access”, which made absolutely no difference in who used them. Their were no queues, people were bunched up everywhere like in a third-world country. We helped an elderly woman use the kiosk in front of us; otherwise, we would have never gotten to it. To add insult to injury, there was a single queue with just two agents checking the bags we had tagged using the kiosk. This line had at least two hundred people in it, and there was not a separate Premier or First Class line. I am so grateful that flying is now a rarity for me. Even the TSA had things under better control than the airline. (Lifetime Platinum on UA).
Next up — Delta (and American, oh yeah American) wants to know if youbwill occasionally give yourselves insulting and patronizing looks as you fly.
Because you know, the FAs are there for your safety and those subtle insults won’t hand themselves out!
@Jim,
So, just to confirm (& eliminate United citing Omicron as the “excuse” for the situation we encountered 2-days ago [Weds. 12/22] at Newark), United’s so NOT “Premier Access” check-in/bag drop occurred in PHX, **weeks before** the highly transmissible & rapidly increasing Omicron variant responsible for staff shortages announced yesterday & today at several airlines, including United, was a factor!?!
Because, as noted in my comment above, the “Premier Access” counter/bag drop had a very long, slow moving line that brought to mind checking-in for late afternoon/evening departures at JFK, or especially Xmas holiday family trips to Florida on Eastern or National Airlines from LGA when each of those (long gone) airlines, respectively, had flights using L-1011s & DC-10s to MIA, FLL & PBI departing around the same time (along with several other flights on their narrow-bodies) with hordes of passengers packed into the waaaayyy too small & narrow check in areas at LGA’s recently closed & soon to be torn down Central Terminal Building that was so NOT designed to handle 2-3 L-1011 TriStars & DC-10s at a time!
@Howard, Yes. This flight was on Sunday, November 14th. We had two large carry-on bags that we usually check. After waiting 20 minutes to drop them off, and seeing the line barely move, we abandoned the luggage tags and carried them on instead.
@Howard, Yes. This flight was on Sunday, November 14th. We had two large carry-on bags that we usually check. After waiting 20 minutes to drop them off, and seeing the line barely move, we abandoned the luggage tags and carried them on instead.
I am not an employee and should not be bagging my own groceries, etc. In fact, I will not. Kiosks are not perfect. I want a human there for when they don’t work and as one who pays for first class and is a 2MM, I want an elite counter.
DLF, Yes, elite status should be serviced personally and properly.
Since I fly almost weekly for work, and have two checked bags, I always use the agent. I will check in via the app, but always use the agent at the airport.
Who only takes elevators that are manned by an attendant?
Who lines up for a bank teller to withdraw cash?
Who doesn’t pump his or her own gas?
Of I go to a store and want smokes or liquor, invariably it’s gonna be one of not both, then the kiosk is pointless anyway as it needs a human to authorize the sale of restricted goods.
If I’m at an airport, whilst less stressed about the coof than some, I wouldn’t use the things anyway coz I pay out my own pocket to earn and maintain my FF status and even pre meltdown I’m not that interested in touching something that’s had a thousand grubby mitts from all around the world touching it.
I’ll use a human coz them having a paycheck is more important to me than a machine increasing shareholders profits.
@ Jake says:
December 25, 2021 at 9:35 pm
Who only takes elevators that are manned by an attendant?
Who lines up for a bank teller to withdraw cash?
Who doesn’t pump his or her own gas?
So in the future:
Who will take an airport shuttle that has no driver?
Who will sleep in a hotel room cleaned only by a Roomba vacuum?
Who will take a pilotless flight controlled in a foreign country from a ground based flight center?
Who will break up the fights while flying on Spirit Airlines and at Miami departure gates?