Having worked most of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years at a Mega Station all I have to say is where do we draw the line between HPPT and Customer Service. We have always been on top of Customer Service and have preached and strived for "POS", but this Holiday season we failed from a front line persons view point. We ran short in every department and those who suffered were our Customers with long lines and long turns, misconnections and missed oportunity to provide fair, let alone, "Good", Customer Service. Supervisors ran short and worked more flights than agents. Ramp Sups were in each Aircraft bin, Ops Sups were merely Wheelchair pushers, Customer Service Sups were pulled in numerous directions. Customers sat on floors as they missed flights that had open seats because noone had the time to check to see if rerouting was an option as Mother Nature took her toll again this year. Bags missed flights because Sups were too busy loading to check on the numerous gate changes due to weather caused delays. Ops Sups ran from gate to gate pushing Customers in Wheelchairs. Customer Service Supervisors were pulled from one issue to another covering all 10 to 11 Gates unable to check connection and rebook. I speak for the masses and the numbers speak for themselves as far as performance goes. Delay writting and coding should now be apart of creative writing in schools as they are written off to so many causes that ones head would spin reading some of them. Simple fact is we failed on so many levels and most of this was caused to save a head count from each department. If each minute of delay actually costs our company even $5.00 a minute, it would of been MUCH, MUCH cheaper to add a missing scheduled person. I don't believe so much in over staffing, but if a department was scheduled 13, then they should of covered 13 shifts.
This still is the GREASTEST Airline in the world, and just might be the Greatest Company as a whole and what makes us different than the rest is our Customer Service and now more than ever we can't afford to lower ourselves to the Others standard. Lets learn from this past Holiday season and be better prepared for the next. Cutting costs are enormously important to our future, but so are OUR Customers, external and don't forget our internal ones as well.
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