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Comment by makerofspoons | Hacker News Reader

Not having enough human capacity for a random event is reasonable enough, but between their app and their website there should be a smooth, automated, and easy way for customers to rebook or get their money back to book with another airline. That shouldn't require going through a person, especially if there are not enough people available.

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How long should that take, for every single person doing business with a company to change their plans?

If you give users the right self-service options, they'll resolve it for themselves between the start of the outage and when they expected to fly. They'll rebook or take their money and go.

I'd assume a nontrivial number of customers are calling because automated methods to reschedule aren't giving them the options that they want, and they assume (probably incorrectly) that they will do better when talking to a human.

I don't know with Southwest, but I know more than one airline has a system that sends automatic "choose one of these options" emails when flights are cancelled. When all of your customers need new flights, though, the issue isn't how the rescheduling is done, it's the fact that almost nobody is going to be able to choose an option they like.

> they assume (probably incorrectly) that they will do better when talking to a human.

Anecdotally, it has worked enough times for me to call/talk to an agent vs dealing with the automated suggestion system. Just don't be a jerk.

One automated system gave me a next flight of the following day. Spoke to an agent and was rerouted through another hub and only delayed by two hours overall.

In another case, a delayed flight caused me to miss my connection. Was officially told that I was out of luck and would have to wait (as were the jerks who asked) for the morning. I went and got a seat on the plane out that night.

Of the two other responses to this thread, one recommends "don't be a jerk" and the other recommends "complain enough".

I wonder if there just isn't a negative feedback loop here (everybody gets helped) so people just assume their way is the most effective.

> one recommends "don't be a jerk" and the other recommends "complain enough"

Those aren't mutually exclusive. You can complain a lot but not be a jerk. You just have to understand and acknowledge the situation the customer service rep is in but still be firm on what you want.

Exactly this, I feel like the "all of your customers" thing is important and what bothered me about the GP comment. I know it's tremendously inconvenient for people who are trying to travel, but it seems like a triumph of technology to be able to sort something like this out in less than a whole day? And to expect literally every customer to be able to jump on an app and get a refund or reschedule in the same hour strikes me as... possible, but not necessarily a thing we should expect?

In my experience if you complain enough the human agent will occasionally agree to rebook you on another airline even when the online system doesn't show that as an option.

That's called an automated re-accommodation system. They do have one. People call anyway.

Yes but who knows about that?

Flight got cancelled? Send me a text, email, whatever. They have all of my information. Text me a link.

The reality is that they don't do that because they'd lose money this way. It's best to underprovide so people who don't want to wait just go elsewhere.

When covid hit last year I had to spend literally hours on the phone trying to cancel/rebook because Alitalia did not allow this online. The low-cost EasyJet instead *sent me an email* with a link to get a refund. It's easy. Nobody had to wait for disaster to hit to think of a solution.

These are just (anti-user) choices that companies make to save money. Some users will still call, but much fewer.

> Flight got cancelled? Send me a text, email, whatever. They have all of my information. Text me a link.

Airlines always do it for me. Well, at least in the last handful of years I've been flying.

It sends a text to affected passengers with a link to the reaccom page.

I don't know about Alitalia. Not all airlines have these systems.

Would these be working during the giant computer outage?

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