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Carl T. Bergstrom

This leads us to the problem that has broken air travel today. When hold times are twenty minutes, getting a call-back is a perk. When hold times are nine hours, it is a necessity. But by design these callbacks are not available and instead we get a catastrophic system failure, where the hold times connection durations that another technology, cell phones, are not engineered to provide.

33 comments
Carl T. Bergstrom replied to Carl T. Bergstrom

The result? Travelers around the country stranded, missing holiday celebrations with their families, and unable to obtain assistance from the airlines in any way.

Carl T. Bergstrom replied to Carl T. Bergstrom

That's the story here.

Mechanisms that create frictions in normal times cause system failures in abnormal times—precisely when those systems are needed the most.

And worse yet, such mechanisms are often there by design. This is the nature of corporate customer service in 2022.

Taylor Nichols, MD :verified: replied to Carl T. Bergstrom

@ct_bergstrom would be curious to discuss this in the context of healthcare and health system collapse because this fails perfectly or maybe parallels exactly what is happening in healthcare right now.

Prasad Jallepalli, MD, PhD replied to Taylor Nichols, MD :verified:

@Tnicholsmd @ct_bergstrom As an economy, we continue to underfund services that are not only societal goods in "normal" times but critical and essential in times of stress (which are all-too-common).

Resilience and robustness require surplus capacity.

Carl T. Bergstrom replied to Prasad Jallepalli, MD, PhD

@jallepap @Tnicholsmd

Yes. And I think what's so interesting to me about this example is that it's not a matter of underfunding resilience. It's a matter deliberately engineering fragility because it turns a profit most of the time.

Thank you. This is helping me so much to clarify my own thinking.

costrike replied to Carl T. Bergstrom

@ct_bergstrom @jallepap @Tnicholsmd it's like what's been done to our medical system. Engineering things thus is great for maximizing returns, but not so great for dealing with unusual spikes in demand.

Taylor Nichols, MD :verified: replied to Carl T. Bergstrom

@ct_bergstrom @jallepap I think that’s exactly right. We find and run emergency departments on the thinnest possible level of resilience to maximize profits for all involved. But we fund other emergency services via government funding to have optimal staffing at all times (fire, EMS, etc). I truly cannot fathom why others couldn’t possibly imagine this also being a good idea for medicine.

Jim Vernon replied to Carl T. Bergstrom

@ct_bergstrom You can edit the link in your original post.

Edit

Test

Carl T. Bergstrom replied to Jim

@jimvernon Not without orphaning every followup post and response.

Jim Vernon replied to Carl T. Bergstrom

@ct_bergstrom I just edited mine and it still shows your reply.

Crystal Steltenpohl replied to Carl T. Bergstrom

@ct_bergstrom @jimvernon Edit and "delete and redraft" are different. If you're posting through an app, it may not have the edit function yet, but I think most servers have it on the web client.

Carl T. Bergstrom replied to Crystal

@cnsyoung @jimvernon Thank you. It's not present on the web client for fediscience.org but I sure would love to have access to such for situations like this.

Crystal Steltenpohl replied to Carl T. Bergstrom

@ct_bergstrom Interesting -- it's there for me on the browser (I'm also on fediscience) but it's not on Tusky (Android app)

Crystal Steltenpohl replied to Crystal

@ct_bergstrom Anyway also wanted to say this sounds like it's needlessly frustrating and I'm sorry your family (and so many others) are having to deal with it. Travel is stressful outside of holidays but it seems especially shitty when companies pull this stuff during times when people would at the very least probably prefer to be on the phone with the families they're trying to visit or something rather than on hold/reconnecting with a service agent.

Leigh Honeywell replied to Carl T. Bergstrom

@ct_bergstrom in government service design I’ve seen this referred to as “rationing by friction” eg this fantastic thread on the bird site by @allafarce: twitter.com/allafarce/status/1

But yes it’s very much deliberate. One of my new years project ideas is actually to lobby the 🇨🇦 gov to mandate that airlines offer call-backs; there’s no excuse at this point to not, and the human cost is so high.

Carl T. Bergstrom replied to Leigh

@leigh @allafarce

Precisely. "Rationing by friction" is a great term. This is a major issue in (1) research grant applications and (2) journal submissions.

And wonderful about your idea for lobbying CA.

Stuart Marks replied to Leigh

@leigh @ct_bergstrom @allafarce Good term, “rationing by friction.” Happens in corporations too. If a department wants to ban something but they know they can’t get away with it, they allow it but require a VP signature. Still too much of it happening? Require a senior VP or an executive VP signature instead.

Cavyherd replied to Leigh

@leigh @ct_bergstrom @allafarce

Predicted "excuse": "But the staff shortages... 😫"

Jim Vernon replied to Carl T. Bergstrom

@ct_bergstrom Edit comment aside, I thought I was going to disagree with your take on corporate customer service, but you make a good point about being able to automate much of it. So much of what we call in for could easily be done by the customer instead of an agent.

Yogthos replied to Carl T. Bergstrom

@ct_bergstrom you can actually edit the original post

Joseph Delaney replied to Carl T. Bergstrom

@ct_bergstrom At what point are customers going to decide that airlines just hate them? Part of what has made moving to Winnipeg so difficult is that the pandemic has left air travel in Canada in tatters. So what was once a nice and central location is now just inconvenient to everywhere.

Jonathan Kamens replied to Carl T. Bergstrom

@ct_bergstrom this reminds me of a fact my niece learned in business school: Costco makes shopping at their store time-consuming on purpose. They want to discourage customers from just popping in to pick up an item or two, because large shopping trips are more efficient and therefore more profitable. The time you spend waiting in line for a cashier at Costco is built in by design.
EDIT: As per @kyozou, the part about waiting in line is wrong. Thank you for the correction!

Carl T. Bergstrom replied to Jonathan

@jik Wow. Do you know if this is written up anywhere? It's a fascinating example.

Jonathan Kamens replied to Jonathan

@ct_bergstrom Thinking more about this I'm not sure it's quite the same. Costco customers keep coming back, so... Perhaps making people wander the whole store forces them to discover "deals" that on the whole they end up being happy with, so ultimately maybe both Costco and its customers get what they want?
Though speaking personally as a Costco shopper, I rarely go for any of the deals. Usually I walk in with a list and walk out with the things on it. Maybe I'm not typical. 🤷

Fifi Lamoura replied to Jonathan

@jik @ct_bergstrom Supermarkets are incredibly devious and time wasting by design. Things from moving the locations of things regularly so you're forced to browse. The attempts to manipulate us to squeeze every last penny is exhausting. (I wonder how much energy it actually costs us and how much of our lives it consumes in hours?)

Kyozou replied to Fifi

@fifilamoura @jik @ct_bergstrom The milk is at the back to force you to walk through the store even when you just need a gallon of milk for the kids.

Kyozou replied to Jonathan

@jik @ct_bergstrom The first part of what you wrote is more or less correct; the second part is not. Costco absolutely does not want customers waiting in line at the checkout. At some stores there’s even a giant board with cashier scores for speed.

Voron replied to Carl T. Bergstrom

@ct_bergstrom There is also the fact that in many sectors there are effective monopolies, where only a few large corporations own a massive market share and they all agree (without communication) to the same anti consumer business practices so their is no choice the customers can make by taking their business elsewhere. So much for the free market fixing problems like it’s proponents say, because of effective monopolies that have been allowed

Richard M. Carpiano, PhD, MPH replied to Carl T. Bergstrom

@ct_bergstrom
The free market/corporate version of Hurd & Moynihan's concept of Administrative Burdens.

Last year around this time when Alaska had storm/COVID delays/cancellations and multi-hour phone delays, they actually offered a call back. IIRC, I got mine about 9 hours later.

Greengordon replied to Carl T. Bergstrom

@ct_bergstrom

Maybe not such a great idea to allow a few companies to dominate air travel, ie an oligopoly.

Also, why not rebuild the passenger rail network?

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