Quick manual kerning in Adobe Illustrator?

Unless I am missing something, the normal way to manually adjust the kerning up/down is to select between the targeted letters, then go up to the character panel and adjust it as needed. Rinse and repeat for each individual area that you wish to change.

Is there a shortcut? It is extremely time consuming to do this for every set of characters that need adjustment. I have attempted recording action-scripts to do say a -10pt kern, but I am newer to scripts and was not successful. I have tried finding a ready made action-script but I had no luck. Thanks for help and input!