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Qantas CEO Alan Joyce this week apologised to customers for the long call centre wait times. Chief Customer Officer Stephanie Tully also emailed customers with “an update on contact centre wait times”, where she admitted the current situation has “not been acceptable”.
It’s good to see Qantas at least acknowledging there’s a problem, but the apologies from Qantas’ senior management are full of qualifications. For many Australian frequent flyers, both apologies came across as tone-deaf and insulting as they appeared to blame customers for the airline’s customer service problems!
For anyone who missed it, this is the email from Stephanie Tully that was sent to the millions of Qantas Frequent Flyer members on 7 April 2022:
AFF members respond
While it is good to hear Qantas’ side of the story, many AFF members said they found the email insulting. It’s full of excuses and promises to do better, which we’ve already heard plenty of times before. But perhaps the most revealing thing about this email is that it shows Qantas management doesn’t really understand what customers are having to deal with on a daily basis.
Here’s just one of many, many comments posted on this topic on AFF over recent days:
I’m not going to pretend that being an airline executive over the last 24 months would have been anything but extremely difficult. However, some airlines have clearly been able to keep up with expectations of customers through the majority of that time, some much bigger than Qantas – such as AA. Others haven’t (another good example being SQ).
This problem is hugely significant for the airline and the way that e-mail reads, it seems like the management can’t quite understand why the customer is having problems – and thus it must be the customer’s fault. It is likely some combination of upper management being foolish, middle management telling fibs to cover up their own shortcomings and a general contempt for paying passengers – and that attitude at Qantas long pre-dates COVID.
– Must…Fly!, 7 April 2022
Qantas blaming customers for its own service failures
This email and the comments made by Alan Joyce earlier this week seem to suggest that none of the problems with Qantas’ customer service are actually Qantas’ fault. The airline fails to accept any actual responsibility for the problem – instead blaming external factors.
The most bizarre part is that Qantas appears to be blaming customers trying to call them for the long wait times.
Ms Tully says that the reason for the long wait times is that the average number of calls has increased from 7,500 to 14,000 calls per day. (Bizarrely, these numbers are quite different from Alan Joyce’s claim that call volumes have increased from 5,000 to 15,000 calls per day.)
As borders reopened and Qantas added more flights to its schedule, of course more people would be booking flights. With more people travelling, call volumes would always increase. Did Qantas not expect or plan for this? Were they hoping that all their customers would just go away or fly with other airlines when travel ramped back up?
Increased call volumes due to COVID-19 was an acceptable excuse in March 2020 when this was truly an unforeseen event. That was more than two years ago…
Alan Joyce also today blamed customers at Sydney Airport for the long security lines, despite several security lanes being out of service – a comment he later backtracked on.
Taking credit for anything that goes well, while blaming others for anything that goes wrong, is the epitome of poor leadership.
Most Qantas customers would prefer to self-service, but can’t!
“Nearly 60 per cent of the people that ring the call centre could be doing that on the website or in the app because there’s a lot more functionality,” Mr Joyce said this week.
This comment from the Qantas CEO implies that the majority of Qantas customers calling up are either being selfish and clogging up the phone lines unnecessarily, or are too stupid to manage their own bookings and would somehow prefer to wait hours and hours on hold for the chance to possibly speak to a person.
Sure, there are probably a few people calling to ask questions about travel restrictions or to do something they could do online. But most people are calling up because they can’t – even though many of these things really ought to be possible on the Qantas website if it worked properly.
Why would anyone voluntarily wait five, six or even eight hours on hold just to do something they could easily do themselves online or in the Qantas App? They are calling because Qantas has left them with no other choice!
Yes, Qantas customers can theoretically go online to change their flights, redeem flight credits, request a refund, book a Classic Flight Reward, rebook a reward flight cancelled by the airline, select a seat, and lots more. But all too often, the Qantas website doesn’t actually allow people to do these things, instructing customers to instead call the contact centre as their only option.
One of the most frustrating situations is when Qantas cancels a flight and rebooks a passenger onto another flight that is totally unsuitable (e.g. because it’s scheduled to arrive after the return flight has already departed). Or worse, when Qantas changes a customer’s flight but doesn’t re-issue the ticket! In many of these situations, they only way to fix this is by calling up as the website simply doesn’t provide an option to self-service.
As one AFF member said:
How many times have AFFers posted that they would love to be able to make their own changes on line? Even prefer to! And that they should be able to, but Qantas IT is so antiquated? Yet in the article, Alan Joyce states, “Nearly 60 per cent of the people that ring the call centre could be doing that on the website or in the app because there’s a lot more functionality.” Does he not actually know what his own business can and cannot do? Pretty poor of the boss!
– Port Power, 7 April 2022
In response to Qantas releasing “how to” videos covering answers to the most common customer problems, another AFF member said:
Hopefully there will be a “How to video” titled “How to have your award flight booking ticket issued or re-issued in a timely manner so the booking is not auto-cancelled by the operating airline via qantas.com web site“. I would like to such a button on the web site.
– NM, 7 April 2022
Qantas failing to issue tickets, even after multiple follow-up phone calls, has been a very common problem in recent months. This is a major problem because when tickets are not issued, most partner airlines will auto-cancel the reservation after a few days. Plus, if customers turn up at the airport without a ticket, they won’t be able to check-in and will instead have to – you guessed it – phone the call centre since there are no longer any staff at the airport who can help!
Australian Frequent Flyer has asked Qantas for comment on the issue of tickets not being issued. So far, we have not received a response.
Customers forced to call multiple times for the same issue
Another major reason for the increase in call volumes is that so many customers are being forced to call multiple times because their issue is not being resolved on the first call.
There are countless stories on AFF of Qantas customers who had to call four, five, six or even more times because their first calls were disconnected, they spoke to somebody in Cape Town or Suva who didn’t know what to do, they received wrong information, the first person they spoke to made a mistake, or the staff didn’t follow through with what they promised to do.
This is happening way too frequently when dealing with the overseas contract call centres operated by Mindpearl. Many of the staff there seem to lack basic training and experience, have no authority to take ownership of problems, and don’t even have access to the same reservations system as Qantas staff in the Hobart or Auckland call centres!
The average call length has also increased by 50%, which Qantas says is due to “the complexity of some itineraries across more than one airline where routes are re-opening and flights are re-starting at different times”.
In reality, this is likely because so many calls are now being answered by poorly trained staff in those overseas locations who constantly place customers on hold for extended periods and take way longer to complete tasks than their counterparts in Australia and New Zealand. Again, this is not the fault of customers!
Qantas says it has more call centre staff now than before the pandemic
In a statement, Qantas said this week that it now has more staff in its contact centres than before the pandemic.
“We’ve already added hundreds of staff to our call centres, and each month we are recruiting and training more people,” the Qantas statement said.
“By June this year, we’ll have increased staffing by 200 per cent (an increase of 750 people) within 12 months. It takes six weeks to train new call centre agents.”
This is probably true, but almost all of these new staff are based overseas – like in Suva, where Qantas opened a new call centre just a few months ago.
Qantas claims that it has around 250-300 people working per day in its call centres around the world. Qantas says that last Wednesday, 69 of these people were working in Hobart. The Australian Services Union disputes this, saying the Hobart call centre often only has 14-30 staff rostered on at a time.
Qantas could triple the number of contact centre staff. But if many of the operators can’t provide competent service, what’s the point?
Do other airlines really have the exact same issue?
There is no doubt that COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on the airline industry, and Alan Joyce perhaps had a point when he said that “other international airlines are having the exact same issue”.
Some are, but there are still plenty of other international airlines that still answer customer calls immediately. Even the airlines with longer wait times at the moment (like Singapore Airlines, which closed its Singaporean call centre during the pandemic) are still providing a far better service than Qantas right now.
Certainly, Australia’s other airlines don’t seem as badly affected. I called Virgin Australia today (without entering my frequent flyer number for priority service) and there was no wait time at all. I also called Jetstar today, which ironically is Qantas’ low-cost carrier, and waited less than a minute to speak to a human. Perhaps this is because Jetstar makes it possible to do a lot more things on its website and has an online chat option.
My experience calling Rex today wasn’t quite as good. My first call to Rex was disconnected after 9 minutes, but my second call was at least answered after 17 minutes on hold.
By the way, Stephanie Tully’s claim on Ben Fordham’s 2GB radio show last week that “our competitor airline in Australia answers no calls in Australia” is simply not true. Virgin Australia has call centres in both Manila and Brisbane, although this doesn’t really matter because the staff at both of Virgin’s call centres are highly competent.
Now is the time for action, not more excuses
It’s good that Qantas is at least now acknowledging there is a serious problem. But the contact centre has already been a disaster for years, with unreasonable wait times even well before the pandemic. Yesterday’s insulting email was only sent because Qantas felt it had to react to all the negative press it has been receiving in recent weeks.
It’s time for Qantas to stop the excuses, stop blaming customers, and to drastically improve its customer service. Stephanie Tully says this is her top priority – now it’s time to prove it.
Qantas says it is currently in the process of hiring and training more call centre staff. Let’s hope most of these people are in Hobart or Auckland, as it’s clear that the offshore call centre experiment has backfired spectacularly.
Wages in South Africa and Fiji may be significantly lower, but the use of these call centres operated by Mindpearl is trashing Qantas’ reputation. It’s likely also costing the airline much more money in the long run as these staff are taking so much longer to assist customers (if at all) and Qantas has lost a lot of business as angry customers book with other airlines.
Qantas is currently actively recruiting contact centre staff in Auckland, which is at least a good sign.
A serious investment in fixing the Qantas website so that customers can actually do all the things Qantas management seems to think they can do online is also desperately needed!
We’ve heard lots of excuses from Qantas about things that are outside of its control. It would be great if the airline also addressed and fixed the many failures of its own making.
Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: Qantas Call Centre Long Wait Times
