Article: Spare a Thought for the Poor Qantas Contact Centre Staff

[Stanley Lambchop]

Spent 2hrs 20 in the call waiting queue last week to deal with an online booking that hadn't ticketed or charged my CC (so not something that could be resolved without speaking to someone). I know it sounds entitled, but a 2hrs+ wait time as a WP is just unacceptable. Having said that, once I actually got through, the call centre rep was excellent, efficient and resolved the issue for me. Thumbs up for the individual, thumbs down for the structure they're working in.

 

[BD1959]

If find it incredible that a scam call centre can answer the phone in seconds and real call centres (and Qantas are NOT alone in this) take hours. It's the single most effective way of distinguishing the fake call centre.

However, once answered, they both tend to have the same degree of competence ...

Regards,

BD

 

[Ag2156]

The modern business and customer service model is for long waiting times. Why can't Australians in general and frequent flyers accept and understand that? Australians have been deemed incompetent at customer service; hence the move to overseas-based call centre operators who are trained to speak in standard sentences rather than conversational English.

Really? Love to see your evidence that the modern customer service model is to create long wait times, I assume you are thinking that it’s a strategy to drive people on line? ….. good organisations work to increase self serve options and match the lower telephony demand with fewer phone staff or transition them to chat as volume moves.
Organisation’s that fail to think it through, or plan properly will end up in the service spiral like Qantas is in, the only way out for them now is a massive injection of people to get out of the multiple retries whilst at the same time fixing the website and building up authenticated chat, right now it’s a numbers game and rightly, no one should blame the frontline staff for this.
I would challenge the assertion that the experience that Qantas is providing is some sort of model that organisations in Australia is adopting

 

[Guvner]

If find it incredible that a scam call centre can answer the phone in seconds and real call centres (and Qantas are NOT alone in this) take hours. It's the single most effective way of distinguishing the fake call centre.

However, once answered, they both tend to have the same degree of competence ...

Regards,

BD

Speaking of which, I just received a call from David Williams from Comm Bank. He had the thickest Southern Indian accent you could imagine. The fact that I've never been a customer of Comm Bank may also have roused my suspicion that it was a scam call..

 

[wotan]

The modern business and customer service model is for long waiting times. Why can't Australians in general and frequent flyers accept and understand that? Australians have been deemed incompetent at customer service; hence the move to overseas-based call centre operators who are trained to speak in standard sentences rather than conversational English.

Bulls1st. The companies require more bang for their buck and so use mostly untrained or poorly trained people in relatively poor countries.
Those that understand and value customer service are bringing back the call centre to Australia. The next % are training up the staff to a better level. The rest have little care.

 

[jb747]

I hear that it's just as bad internally. Trying to ring the likes of crew scheduling has become impossible.

 

[Tropic]

I agree with pn1. We need to put aside our silly entitled expectations for timely responses and reasonable customer service and instead come together as one big QF family, hold hands and sing the special QF song!! All together now... dah dah de dah dah...
Seriously though, not sure QF has any options to quickly improve customer response times...its just going to take time and they know they have a captured market to a large extent so can afford to absorb some short term brand damage...

 

[Guvner]

I agree with pn1. We need to put aside our silly entitled expectations for timely responses and reasonable customer service and instead come together as one big QF family, hold hands and sing the special QF song!! All together now... dah dah de dah dah...
Seriously though, not sure QF has any options to quickly improve customer response times...its just going to take time and they know they have a captured market to a large extent so can afford to absorb some short term brand damage...

If you can work your way through the clichéd motherhood statements in this article from 2018 regarding digital transformation, without throwing up, there's a little gem at the end:

“Our speed to market is starting to increase through more frequent iterations and releases. The new currency we all deal with is speed to market, speed to value. Again we’ve got a long way to go but the pace is picking up and people have really been keen about the improved speed.

“In addition, the [internal] conversation is changing to a value based one rather than business-driven one, with the customer firmly at the centre.”

 

[RichardMEL]

Definitely a case for punters to "Not shoot the messenger" or in this case the front line employees answering call after call after call after..... frustrated call.

You can absolutely bet after x hours on hold not everyone is as reasonable as many here are and DO take it out on the call taker. It's a thankless job first level phone support in a way because usually they call because they have a problem and they want it solved.. and having to wait well we're all exhausted and annoyed....

and as others have noted the issue is with QF management NOT an individual (no matter WHERE they are located).

Unfortunately there's a cultural "thing" with some (not all!) people that people in service industries and positions - be it the person stacking shelves at the supermarket, the Maccas cashier or call taker at your least fave telco or in this case airline customer service - are somehow fair game for abusefor whatever frustrations they have that quite probably are well beyond control - eg Woolies is out of prodct X, the ice cream machine at Maccas is broken or the thee hour wait for the call to be answered.

I always try to be aware of this even when frustrated and NOT lost my #@*@)@ at the person whoose job is to help me(or at the very least I *want* them to help me). Abusing them is hardly going to assist with that anyway.

so I definitely DO feel for he front line staff copping it for things beyond their control and you can be sure a lot of it is going on sadly.

 

[Jurahn]

Is there any evidence that people are 'taking out their anger' on the call centre staff? There isn't in the article, but thought I'd ask.

When my call eventually got answered after 4+ hours of trying at different times, my response was to nearly cry with relief and the first thing I said was "it's so lovely to hear your voice!" Which made the CSA laugh.

Working in a call centre, it invariably comes with the territory. I was a call centre operator (not at Qantas!) for over 3 years and it's an extremely stressful job. Abuse and rudeness from callers is commonplace, as is a lack of respect - mind you, that was also evident from other departments at our workplace, unfortunately respect for the job call centre workers do and what they have to put up with is lacking across the board.

Whilst many callers are nice, pleasant to deal with, and understanding if something takes time to resolve and we have to get more information for them, or escalate an issue elsewhere, many others are not and it can get to the point where you just dread picking up the next call. There's no downtime after a nasty or abusive call, it's just on to the next one - everything you do is monitored, tracked and audited from the moment you log in until you finish your shift - EVERY working minute of your day. No casual chats with workmates, or having a break from your desk (except for scheduled breaks such as lunch) go for a walk to have a chat with so-and-so in the next office or to get a coffee. KPIs are all-important and you WILL hear about it if you're not meeting them.

It's great you said such a positive thing to the CSA who answered your call, it may well have made his/her day! I certainly have much more patience and sympathy when calling contact centres these days - after seeing things from the other side, I know just how hard it can be. I stuck with it as the employment situation here is pretty dire, and we needed the income, so I stayed until - quite frankly - I burned out, couldn't take it any more. We were only a small contact centre, but I saw several dozen colleagues come and go during that time.

 

[Franky]

Bulls1st. The companies require more bang for their buck and so use mostly untrained or poorly trained people in relatively poor countries.
Those that understand and value customer service are bringing back the call centre to Australia. The next % are training up the staff to a better level. The rest have little care.

Not that this is any recommendation, but Telstra is currently migrating their call centes back to Australia...

 

[TheInsider]

I hear that it's just as bad internally. Trying to ring the likes of crew scheduling has become impossible.

Yep, 40-60 minute wait times - due to no staff.

 

[burmans]

I would support this IF you could transact online… there are so many ways QF do not allow this, so the slap in the face customer service model doesn’t work!

So totally agree with this. Have had so many examples of things I’d be happy to do online, save both me and the airlines time but am forced to ring up, Qantas by no means the only example of this (SingaporeAir and American also), just ridiculous.

 

[RichardMEL]

Absolutely! I love self service and automation. QF have mde *some* steps that make this better, but are woeful in many others - as we all know - and I firmly believe due to massive under investment in, and limitations of their current platform on top of Amadeus (and legacy systems causing more limitations - eg the flight credits). Things many other airlines seem to have sorted out a long time ago, or at least are so much better at in many regards (but I am sure there are also worse out there!). It's so frustrating as a customer that many long time issues go on and on and obviously the more of these common issues that get resolved for the punters to do online that would reduce the demand for using the phone and thus provide much relief to the cell centre wait times. Everyone, including QF, know this. They did say what last year? The year before (I've lost track!) they were doing all these things - indeed it was one of the alleged cornerstones of the whole removal of service desks at airports and in lounges because they'd supposedly improved and would continue to, self service options via the app and so on. To be fair there have been changes - eg apply for ODU on the app, change to earlier flights in irrops from the app(but this may or may not be useful in practice it's hard to tell) - but there's just so much more that could - and should - be done.

And the irony to this is apparent removal of functionality from airport kiosks (to check in, print BP's, do things like seat changes etc) that actually reduce customer self service opportunities that seem like a rather strange call by the airline (yes I know all the hardware is being refreshed etc).

We who book/fly a fair bit with the airline know all of this stuff and see it and it's so frustrating. Specially when JQ, fully owned by QF, seem to have so much of this nailed down and have done so for such a long time (noting they are not bolted onto legacy Amadeus, which I am sure has much to do with it).

No doubt QF is spending money on these things, but probably not enough and/or the problems are far more significant to overcome than imagined... and when you are mired in red ink and cutting everywhere it does seem ever increasing hole and a bit of a catch-22 at this point - you need money to improve the systems (and call centre ops) but in order to have money you need to get the revenue, but major factors impacting on that are of course the pandemic, but of course the lost income due to, yep, poor systems and call centre ops and a book away factor on top of things outside of the airline's control (like oil prices, wars, gov controls etc)

It would definitely not be a fun time to be in QF senior management right now, but much of this has been brewing for long before the pandemic, back when profits were going well, and things were just not done when they should have - so they have themselves to blame in many ways.

IMO.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

No doubt QF is spending money on these things, but probably not enough and/or the problems are far more significant to overcome than imagined... and when you are mired in red ink and cutting everywhere it does seem ever increasing hole and a bit of a catch-22 at this point - you need money to improve the systems (and call centre ops) but in order to have money you need to get the revenue, but major factors impacting on that are of course the pandemic, but of course the lost income due to, yep, poor systems and call centre ops and a book away factor on top of things outside of the airline's control (like oil prices, wars, gov controls etc)

They were making billions in profit before the pandemic and the call centre was woeful back then. I’m not sure they have an intention to improve?

The improvements you have mentioned seem to have one common element… making money for qantas. Spending points on ODUs, or being able to move flights in the event of IRROPS. All of those are for QF’s financial advantage.

Once they have your money it then becomes very difficult to contact them, or to get your money back. Those systems haven’t been upgraded.

 

[pn1]

The trend is definitely towards long waits "due to staff shortages". Like it or not, I guess we have to accept that if, for some reason, we can't get the information online, we need to be prepared to wait three to five hours for a call centre agent to become available. Older people who may not be as comfortable with the online experience as others can not expect any consideration. The world has changed and we need to get used to it?

 

[NM]

The trend is definitely towards long waits "due to staff shortages".

But the message given to the customer is normally "due to high call volumes". Strange how this "high call volumes" is the excuse every day. High is a relative expression. I would posit that when its high every day, then it should be considered "normal" and not "high".

The honest message give to customers should be "due to poor planning and under-staffing ...".

Or perhaps just as honest would be "In order to keep airfares at the level you want them to be and to compete in the airline industry, ..."

 

[Simo]

I feel sorry for the staff that management is not putting enough support to there staff to stop being over run with work...

 

[Tropic]

They were making billions in profit before the pandemic and the call centre was woeful back then. I’m not sure they have an intention to improve?

If only QF had diverted some of those big $$ it has spent over the years on virtue marketing into improving (not enhancing...) the functionality and efficiency of their customer interfaces... as they say, make sure your house is structurally sound before worrying about filling it up with trendy furniture and crystal chandeliers...

 

[MEL_Traveller]

The trend is definitely towards long waits "due to staff shortages". Like it or not, I guess we have to accept that if, for some reason, we can't get the information online, we need to be prepared to wait three to five hours for a call centre agent to become available. Older people who may not be as comfortable with the online experience as others can not expect any consideration. The world has changed and we need to get used to it?

Perhaps they should inform passengers during the booking process that if they need any assistance the wait could be five or more hours? I wonder how many would click ‘pay now’?