Hobart Call Centre may be offline for a little while...

[RSD]

HBA call centre still AOG.

 

[RSD]

If anyone does call up and get the Hobart call centre could they please post here so as I know that they have reopened? I had to use a flight credit yesterday but the website kept saying no so I had to call up and eventually I thought that I/they had my new booking made correctly - but then the ticket arrived and I found out that I had been Manila'd and instead of my return leg HKG-SYD-MEL-DPO all being a Y Flex they have booked the HKG-SYD as a Y Saver and as for the domestic legs well nobody is quite sure as on the ticket it says that they are Economy ** which down below says "Same as international fare for this journey" - but in my bookings in my online account it shows them earning at Flex rate - so I rang the call centre and got Cape Town - who after a lot of head scratching and consulting supervisors came to the conclusion that they have no idea how Manila managed to even book it the way that they have - but they think that the domestic legs are Flex. So I'm waiting for Hobart to reopen to try to get it sorted out....

 

[DC3]

If anyone does call up and get the Hobart call centre could they please post here so as I know that they have reopened?

Possibly an opportunity to close permanently.

Manila could take up the slack.

 

[RooFlyer]

If anyone does call up and get the Hobart call centre could they please post here so as I know that they have reopened?

I'll pop by on Thursday and look through the windows.

 

[Cessna 180]

If anyone does call up and get the Hobart call centre could they please post here so as I know that they have reopened? I had to use a flight credit yesterday but the website kept saying no so I had to call up and eventually I thought that I/they had my new booking made correctly - but then the ticket arrived and I found out that I had been Manila'd and instead of my return leg HKG-SYD-MEL-DPO all being a Y Flex they have booked the HKG-SYD as a Y Saver and as for the domestic legs well nobody is quite sure as on the ticket it says that they are Economy ** which down below says "Same as international fare for this journey" - but in my bookings in my online account it shows them earning at Flex rate - so I rang the call centre and got Cape Town - who after a lot of head scratching and consulting supervisors came to the conclusion that they have no idea how Manila managed to even book it the way that they have - but they think that the domestic legs are Flex. So I'm waiting for Hobart to reopen to try to get it sorted out....

They were open Friday afternoon. Took a bit to get through though.

 

[RSD]

They were open Friday afternoon. Took a bit to get through though.

Ah OK - recorded message on the premium line over the weekend was that the Hobart call centre was closed due to unforeseen circumstances and that therefore there might be longer wait times.

 

[RSD]

Recorded message saying the HBA call centre is still offline due to unforeseen circumstances - the guy must have done a real bulldozer job on it!

 

[sudoer]

Just sent to P1s:

Our Qantas Hobart Contact Centre, where the VIP Service Team is located, will continue to remain closed until further notice. During this time we have a limited number of VIP agents and support operating from alternate locations, so you may experience longer call wait times and delays in email responses.

We recommend only contacting the VIP Service Team if your query is in relation to travel within the next seven days.

We're working hard to restore our VIP Service to the high standard you expect, but this will take time as we support our team.

We appreciate your patience and understanding during this time.

 

[RooFlyer]

I was worried that Qantas might take the opportunity to close this high-cost centre. Of course it will be for "the safety of our staff".

I find it hard to believe they couldn't have arranged WFH by now, if they wanted to retain a high level of service. Hello, Manilla.

 

[anat0l]

I was worried that Qantas might take the opportunity to close this high-cost centre. Of course it will be for "the safety of our staff".

I find it hard to believe they couldn't have arranged WFH by now, if they wanted to retain a high level of service. Hello, Manilla.

I thought they would have done that since COVID anyway, since a few of them would have had to WFH. Is the residential Internet service in Hobart / Tasmania pretty unreliable?

Of course, why Hobart of all places. Are Tasmanians cheaper workers than anywhere else in Australia?

 

[RooFlyer]

I thought they would have done that since COVID anyway, since a few of them would have had to WFH. Is the residential Internet service in Hobart / Tasmania pretty unreliable?

Of course, why Hobart of all places. Are Tasmanians cheaper workers than anywhere else in Australia?

Internet in Hobart and Tas larger centres in general pretty good. There are some quite significant gamer developers here (I'm told).

Why Hobart? Dunno. But it is a cheaper place than other cities in Australia and Tas wages traditionally are lower than Mainland.

 

[SnowPatrol]

I thought they would have done that since COVID anyway, since a few of them would have had to WFH. Is the residential Internet service in Hobart / Tasmania pretty unreliable?

Of course, why Hobart of all places. Are Tasmanians cheaper workers than anywhere else in Australia?

Yes. That's why Vodafone used to have their call-centre there too. Good volume of educated, English as-their-first-language staff available.

 

[GDSman]

Internet in Hobart and Tas larger centres in general pretty good. There are some quite significant gamer developers here (I'm told).

There are several games developers and it's the home of Savage Interactive, developers of the wildly popular Procreate digital art app. Quite a thriving software community - we have 22 staff building software for health services globally.

 

[Aeryn]

Of course, why Hobart of all places. Are Tasmanians cheaper workers than anywhere else in Australia?

To some extent but both Tas and SA governments offer subsidies/incentives to companies who opt locate call centers and thus create jobs in their states.

Also because employment opportunities are fewer in Tasmania the roles tend to attract a higher caliber of applicants that intend to stay longer term than in say Sydney or Melbourne where you get lots of backpackers in call centres because there are more businesses competing for staff elsewhere.

 

[dylarr]

Yes. That's why Vodafone used to have their call-centre there too. Good volume of educated, English as-their-first-language staff available.

There’s still Vodafone / TPG call centres in Tasmania, coincidentally they have a presence in same building as the Qantas call centre. Qantas subleased out some space it had deemed as surplus a couple of years ago.

 

[RooFlyer]

As promised, I dropped by the Hobart call centre to see what the situation was. I wasn’t expecting this. Doesn’t look as though the gates are new, so bit of a puzzle of how the guy got through originally.




EDIT: Google maps suggests that the gates may have been normally left open (but an old pic)

 

[L2.]

I thought they would have done that since COVID anyway, since a few of them would have had to WFH. Is the residential Internet service in Hobart / Tasmania pretty unreliable?

I don't know about QF's contact centre operations in particular, but having had some professional experience in that sector, it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't WFH during the pandemic, especially seeing as Tasmania copped the pandemic very lightly compared to much of the mainland.

Most contact centres are set up for agents to be hot desking at terminals, and for a temporary switch to WFH it would require procurement and preparation of sufficient laptops for an entire workforce, which during a fluid situation may take longer than it would for a site to be able to return to normal operations.

Whilst some did fully embrace WFH, it wasn't uncommon in 2020/2021 for contact centres to continue operating on-site (with social distancing) as long as they could technically claim their staff were essential during lockdowns, usually due to a mixture of the below concerns:

- Privacy and/or regulatory concerns relating to customer data
- Trust issues between management and staff
- Lack of IT infrastructure (laptops, etc) so it was put in the too hard basket
- Trust issues between management and staff (repeated twice as this was overarching!)

This would be a good example: Serco call centre workers raise safety concerns after colleague's COVID-19 death

 

[DC3]

English as-their-first-language staff available.