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SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

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Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#101

It’s the same with the tipping that seems almost everywhere these days. Instead of the workers being paid properly by the company the customer gets guilt tripped to tip and when you don’t tip the worker is angry at the customer, not the company.

The problem here is that workers now want to be "paid properly" (what ever that means) and still get tips. There have been restaurants have tried non-tipping models, consumers and staff both hate it. First the highly productive staff often make less under that model (where poor performers make more), consumers hate it because the menu prices increase, and you end up with McD's level customer service where drinks are…

>There have been restaurants have tried non-tipping models,

You mean like most restaurants in europe? Yes the service there is on average worse than in American restaurants because of tips, but in my opinion not by enough of a margin to cost me 20% every time. The times that you would tip at a eu restaurant, its something reasonable well below the ridiculous 20% average that American businesses have swindled into existence (because a tip is supposed to be extra, not the employee's actual means to paying rent)

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem here is that workers now want to be "paid properly" (what ever that means) and still get tips. One sensible metric is that you should be able to support yourself while living in the area you work (or an area nearby such that it isn't a significant financial hardship or timesink to commute to work). Service jobs largely fail on that metric, effectively using government money and family support structures…

So, nice areas shouldn't have restaurants? Paying waiters and busboys enough money to live in downtown SF while their counterparts in the suburbs are paid what they're getting now will distort the labor market in ways that break the whole thing.

That’s a distortion that is what the property owners in California want. Y’all get your million dollar studio apartments with $1000 property taxes and tent cities on the curb outside.

San Francisco can be a playground for the rich until they get sick of paying for $30 lattes or whatever and flee to low cost locales like Manhattan that have affordable housing and transit.

It won’t be “fixed” until we’re all backed into an economic corner where it becomes politically acceptable for the property owners to lose bazillions of dollars.

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you're quoting the part about QR codes for restaurants: I have had good experiences at bars and restaurants where I input my orders online whenever I want, perhaps multiple times throughout the meal, and the waitstaff bring them out promptly. I obviously don't have data, but it feels twice as fast since I never have to wave people down just to relay my orders. This isn't for everyone, and it's not for every sit…

I went to 2 different hot pot restaurants in the last 2 days with wildly different experiences. Both were "all you can eat" style, where you periodically ask for additional orders of meat and vegetables to add to the hot pot. The first had QR codes at the table, where you _must_ order using your phone. You cannot have multiple phones ordering at the same table at the same time. It hard-limited you to making orders on…

I haven't tried all-you-can eat restaurants with QR codes.

My (good) experiences have been at bars and outdoor restaurants, where normal process of placing additional orders is usually slow in my experience, giving the new approach a chance to shine.

I agree with you re: the novelty aspect and personally I dislike ordering on my phone, but will tolerate it for the places where it makes the overall experience better.

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#104
Anyone here reading this, did it change your opinion on the increase in theft at retail stores during the pandemic? Are there people that now realize no one cares who works for Walmart so why not just steal stuff freely? And, they do it because they think that Walmart has destroyed their local economy? I'm not asserting that all is true, just saying it would be an interesting story behind the theft.

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#105

But automated call centers do save the customer time. 9 times out of 10 a user problem is easily remediated by pointing the user to the correct manual. If it wasn't, phone trees and other pre-tech phone routing would never save the company money at all! Customers would buy products with customer service that actually solved their problem instead. Customer service solving the customer problem in the fastest possible t…

> But automated call centers do save the customer time. 9 times out of 10 a user problem is easily remediated by pointing the user to the correct manual.

> If it wasn't, phone trees and other pre-tech phone routing would never save the company money at all!

> Customers would buy products with customer service that actually solved their problem instead.

That assumes that there is a choice. Often enough there isn't. Just like there often enough isnt really competition. We have seen how "compeditors" have colluded to keep wages low before (the "gentlemens agreements between apple, Google etc execs). Funnily enough these agreements are never done to keep exec salaries down, might have something to do with the fact that they all sit on the same boards.

> Customer service solving the customer problem in the fastest possible time is the metric, and if humans were better at it - you could still hire less humans and "save labor costs".

Evidence required. I suspect the systems are actually designed for customers to just give up. This is especially obvious in services which customers only use rarely and thus price becomes the main purchase factor. Take airlines, which probably are the worst in terms of call wait times, people do not buy tickets enough to make purchase decisions based on service when something goes wrong, so service is atrocious, except for business customers and frequent flyers, who typically get significantly better service.

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#106
post #9

But automated call centers do save the customer time. 9 times out of 10 a user problem is easily remediated by pointing the user to the correct manual. If it wasn't, phone trees and other pre-tech phone routing would never save the company money at all! Customers would buy products with customer service that actually solved their problem instead. Customer service solving the customer problem in the fastest possible t…

Solving a customer's problem does not directly make a company money. It may arguably avoid them losing potential future money but it doesn't make them money.

It builds/preserves your brand. A proper customer centric strategy relies on support to empower the sales/product teams (and vice-versa).

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automated call centers save money by disincentivizing calling in, and by making people give up. Most people don't think about customer service or support when they are buying stuff. Actually solving the customers problem is way down the list of objectives for most phone systems. It's easy to see this by comparing the quality of phone support with the kind of market power a company has.

That is an interesting thought. Google, for most consumer products (and a good number of business ones) notoriously has next to no phone support at all. Is this an indication of being a market leader or of being a digital monopoly?

Google is a leader in the tech playbook concept of cornering off your monopoly then treating your customers like shit. It's actually essential to any internet scale business model, because of the challenges of profitable serving so many people if you actually provide some kind of support.

FWIW, google is better positioned to give shitty support because their users are the product anyway, and they grew organically into this. Support was never really part of the bargain (incidentally why I would never take google seriously for "business" services like gsuite or gcp because it's just not their culture).

The more egregious examples are companies like uber (probably the worst) that actually have customers but think they can treat them as badly as google treats its users because it's a "tech" business. And you end up with supposedly "disruptive" businesses that just amount to "we're cheaper because we're self serve and don't offer support (and ignore laws)". But returning to your point and mine, the first step is "blitz-scaling" yourself a de-facto monopoly so you can get away with treating people badly.

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#108
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Not only is tipping a scourge but it doesn't even try to hide what it is, you paying the worker for doing the minimum. In a lot of apps/websites you have to enter a tip before any service is rendered and you have no option to change it later if the service is bad. For some services like Uber Eats/DoorDash I've heard that orders will just sit on a shelf because the tip isn't high enough to entice someone to "c…

>For some services like Uber Eats/DoorDash I've heard that orders will just sit on a shelf because the tip isn't high enough to entice someone to "claim" that order. Tipping is mandatory if you want to get your food in any reasonable timeframe. Honestly this is great, for two reasons: 1. You're letting the market figure out the right price for delivery service at any given moment, which reduces deadweight loss. For i…

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Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#109
This is kind of a bizarre article that tries to view the world through some sort of class struggle.

Airlines make choices about how to run their business.

Consumers make choices about which business to give their money to.

If businesses screw up, then consumers leave.

It’s really that simple.

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the customer know whether or not a worker is paid properly? It is none of their business, or responsibility.

If a business is pushing for tips (those dumbass Toast POS consoles that now often start tipping at 20% ), the workers are underpaid. Tipping is getting out of control, and businesses just need to pay more. Tipping is a stupid concept. Japan has the number three economy in the world and they'll refuse tips. Watch https://youtube.com/watch?v=V4sbYy0WdGQ&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE and tell me that he's wrong.

I really dislike tipping. I can’t remember the last time that service was so amazing that a tip was required. Of course, I’m not sure I would be happier if the bill was the same with the tip component removed. I suppose it does give the consumer some leverage if the service was horrible. I think I’ve just convinced myself that tips are ok.
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