I just listened to this. Lots of excuses and promises to fix things, but as others have said, people want action not empty promises it will get "better every week" that don't eventuate.
Firstly, it may be true that Qantas has more people answering calls now than before Covid, but these people are in places like South Africa and Fiji and aren't trained to nearly the same standard. They are taking infinitely longer to do what an Australian or New Zealand based operator would, give wrong information, hang up on customers, say they will do things but don't, and often fail to perform more complex tasks, so it's a huge net loss for customer service.
Also, Stephanie's claim that "our competitor airline in Australia answers no calls in Australia" is not true. Virgin Australia does have a small team based in Australia that sometimes answers if you call up as a Platinum or Gold Velocity member. I've spoken to them on multiple occasions. By the way, the staff at the competitor airline's overseas call centre are highly trained and a pleasure to deal with anyway.
As others have pointed out, the "following the sun" excuse for having offshore call centres is particularly lame when so many calls made during the middle of the day in Australia are answered in South Africa, where it's the middle of the night.
By the way, I'd be interested to know which phone number Stephanie called when she said the wait time yesterday morning was 25 minutes. Was she calling the Platinum line or VIP Service Team, perhaps? Does anyone know what the actual wait time was when Ben tested it after that interview?
