Bag drop manned or self service ?

The development of self service check-in has motivated airlines to implement "fast bag drop" counters.
The objective of these counters is to offer better service for those passengers who have checked-in online. Initially it is faster but over time these counters tend to become slow bag drop. The reason behind this is, that when agents have access to the full set of functionality of the check-in application they use it and process all customer requests such as seat change or upgrade. One should remember that agents are trained to fulfill customers' requests and not to decline them. Thus agents at fast bag drop positions need to be specially trained to understand that spending time with customer A will create a queue and generate frustration for customer B. So although it is not intuitive, global satisfaction requires to spend as little time as possible with customers; with these customers. Because they are the one that want a fast process rather than the traditional interaction with an agent.
To force agents to limit their interaction to bag acceptance, it is possible to inactivate the unwanted functions. The risk with this, is to generate frustration from agents who claim that their job looses value and interest.
But the benefit is clear : the most efficient bag drop applications allow an agent to process a bag (without tagging) in less than 10s with an average of 15s.

With the success of self-service all along the passenger process up to tagging - which is seen as the most sensitive task to transfer to the passenger – some airlines and airports have shown interest in self-service bag drops. The passenger is asked to use a self service machine to inject the bag in the BHS (baggage handling system). This solution sounds very attractive because it removes the need for agents. Nonetheless operational context and implementation must be carefully studied.
First, reconciliation. Bag reconciliation refers to associating a bag in the hold with a passenger in the cabin. Depending on local reconciliation method (boarding pass, id or biometry. See article on reconciliation) it will be implementable in self service or not. Reconciliation against a boarding pass is quite easy and quick to perform. Same for biometry. But this not the case for id. This is why it is wise to have agents performing reconciliation in countries where picture id is mandatory. We will look at how to organize the check in area in this case (see article on organizing self-service check in area).
Secondly efficiency. How efficient is this self-service bag drop in terms of resources utilization ? Well, if the agent is the main cost driver of the process, then full self-service can be a good option. But in many airports, the issue is capacity at peak time. Thus the true resources cost is the cost of infrastructure : if passengers cannot be handled at peak time, investment will be required. And the amount of this investment is much higher than the cost of the agents involved. In this case the decision criteria will be based on the number of passengers that can be processed per hour and per square meter. The optimal process is not necessarily be the one that is the more automated.
So, how to choose ? For airlines the interest is more likely to be agent cost reduction but airports bear infrastructure cost. To take a decision that considers the global cost of the system, it is important to put in place fees reflect the fact that some of the resource (counters) can be constrained. A solution – but not the only one – could be to flex the cost of the counters depending on the level of scarcity.