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AirAsia should empower their counter staff to increase customer satisfaction

AirAsia is now charging SGD5 to those who check-in at their counter. To avoid paying this additional SGD5, you can either do a web check-in at home, or check-in at the check-in kiosks near their designated check-in counters.

What happens if you didn't check-in via the web at home, and you at the airport and the AirAsia kiosks are down? You would have no choice but to check-in at the counter right? But does this mean you, the customer, is reliable for the SGD5 surcharge?

I was at Changi Airport Terminal 1 this evening and had to do a document check of my printed boarding pass which I checked in at home. I overheard a commotion from the AirAsia counter staff when the check-in kiosk had a technical breakdown and the staff wanted to charge the AirAsia customer the SGD5.

According to the AirAsia counter, there are no options on her system to allow for the waiver for the SGD5 and if the receipts don't tally at the end of the day, she would have to be responsible for that missing "SGD5".

The supervisor wanted to waive the SGD5 charge, but the counter staff was still adamant that the customer should pay the SGD5. She even shouted that if it was another supervisor in charge, the customer will be required to pay the SGD5.

As much as AirAsia has introduced technology to reduce cost, technology often adhere to Murphy's Law where anything can go wrong will go wrong.

When technology goes down, you would need to empower staff to provide for the humanize remedy.

In this case here, if the counter staff had an option to override the SGD 5 surcharge because of a valid reason being the check-in kiosks arn't working, the customer wouldn't be holding up the line for another 10 minutes. This creates more angry customers down the line.

Is SGD5 worth a unhappy customer experience?

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