Counterpoint: a few years ago, having been stuck in abnormally high traffic on the way to the airport, I was running right on the cusp of the arbitrary check-in deadline for my flight. I began the automated checkin service, which was comparitively extremely slow on that day also. It let me start the process, but threw an unspecified error when I got to the final stages to print my boarding pass and bag tags. Upon retrying, I was past the check-in deadline. Buggery.
Walking over to the check-in counter, a polite explanation of the situation I found myself in (and, possibly, my moderate-level status with the carrier but I don't fully know) made the service attendant remove the problem in about 30 seconds, guaranteeing that both I and my luggage would make the flight with no problems despite being 'technically past the deadline now'.
Flesh-based interaction points, by their very nature, have a tendancy to span a far broader range of service quality than machines. The bad are far worse because machines don't gossip and hate their jobs. Conversely, machines have little hope when things go south compared with a good service employee, who'll do their level best to go above and beyond their basic responsibilites to make whatever issue you have either go away or minimally impact you.
My experience is that one of the most apparent examples of this is if you ever find yourself significantly up the greasy ladder of the airline status game for whatever reason. I postulate that because carriers have realised that 'bending the rules' is a relatively 0-cost commodity to exchange for brand loyalty and this is precisely factored into the training and job directives of their employees.
Walking over to the check-in counter, a polite explanation of the situation I found myself in (and, possibly, my moderate-level status with the carrier but I don't fully know) made the service attendant remove the problem in about 30 seconds, guaranteeing that both I and my luggage would make the flight with no problems despite being 'technically past the deadline now'.
Flesh-based interaction points, by their very nature, have a tendancy to span a far broader range of service quality than machines. The bad are far worse because machines don't gossip and hate their jobs. Conversely, machines have little hope when things go south compared with a good service employee, who'll do their level best to go above and beyond their basic responsibilites to make whatever issue you have either go away or minimally impact you.
My experience is that one of the most apparent examples of this is if you ever find yourself significantly up the greasy ladder of the airline status game for whatever reason. I postulate that because carriers have realised that 'bending the rules' is a relatively 0-cost commodity to exchange for brand loyalty and this is precisely factored into the training and job directives of their employees.