THE CASE OF THE HIDDEN AGENT

Once upon a time, in a world too far away, Howard and I were on our way to Paris via US Airways. The trip was great, but the beginning wasn’t.

In that same disappearing world, US Airways had given once a year guest passes for their private lounge to their gold card members. We elected to use the passes while waiting for the Paris flight. Howard’s idea of arriving on time is to get to the airport too many hours before the flight. Cory and Tracy joke that we should sleep there the night before a flight. But this time, we were only a couple of hours early. Always vigilant, we listened for the flight announcement. Somehow, we missed the first call. But on the second call, we zipped over to the gate. No harm done, but that’s where the problem began.

We saw that they had started to board. But both the Priority line and the regular line were empty. So, we went to the Priority line, where we met Mr. Horrendous Customer Service. He barked at us to go through the regular line. Reallly????!! With no one in either line and our tickets showing that our seating group was allowed to board, why did it matter? When we walked through the regular cordoned area to get to the same place as before, I peered at the miserable agent’s ID tag but couldn’t see it clearly. 

“What’s your name?”, I asked. The agent gave me a big smarmy, insolent smile and with a flourish, flipped his badge so that I couldn’t see it. His smile widened. Little man with a little power—not a good combination. “Sweetie, you don’t know what you just got yourself into”, I thought. And, of course, I made a mental note to deal with this when we got home.

1) How could I find this miscreant who worked for a giant corporation in a large airport?

Who has oversight here? Since he worked for the airline, the airline would have oversight. But how to get to the right person? I went online to locate Customer Service resources within the Philadelphia airport. I reached the Public Affairs Manager and explained the problem to her, asking for the managing director for the airline at the Philadelphia site. Bingo!—She gave me his name and contact number. 

2) How could I identify the attendant on the gangway, now, several weeks later? 

I had the date and flight number, and I could describe the attendant. Cory points out that I could also have used my phone to take a photo. A good idea--though in these odd times, that could have escalated the situation to a point that may have created havoc. I was interested in escalating, but not in that way at that time.

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I told my sorry tale to the airline manager, who agreed that this was an incredibly mean spirited and unacceptable breach of customer service. With the information that I provided—agent description, date, flight number—he was able to identify the culprit and institute disciplinary action.

How do I know that the manager wasn’t just placating me? I could tell by his tone of voice, the questions he asked me, and the fact that he called me back after talking to the agent. He did the right thing—he instituted a monitoring protocol for this agent, both as a disciplinary action and to make sure that it didn’t happen again to someone else.

You can be a jerk, but don’t think that you can hide from the consequences. It would have taken so little effort to simply act like a human being rather than abuse a customer. And customer abuse is never acceptable.

Speak up, and you can change the world, step by step, agent by agent.