If you’ve tried to phone Qantas recently, you probably already know how difficult it is to get through to the call centre. Unless you have Platinum or Platinum One status, wait times regularly run into the hours and even if you can get through, there’s no guarantee of receiving correct information or proficient assistance with even basic requests.
To top it all off, many Qantas customers have complained recently that their calls dropped out or that they were hung up on.
Sadly, this is not a one-off or a temporary glitch. The company is quick to blame COVID-19 for the longer than usual wait times – and recent border changes are certainly exacerbating this. But the entrenched problems with the Qantas call centre existed before the pandemic started. In fact, I first wrote about this in 2016 after Qantas closed its call centres in Brisbane and Melbourne.
Over the past several years, the Australian Frequent Flyer forum has been filled with thousands of posts complaining about poor service from the Qantas call centre. It’s not just our forum, either – there are now countless posts on other unrelated fora and on social media by people who’ve waited hours on hold with Qantas and still haven’t had their issues resolved.
“Please don’t call us”
Qantas is currently advising customers not to call them if they’re not travelling within the next 24 hours because they’re “currently receiving a high number of calls”. This would be fair enough if it were a one-off, but this message has been regularly displayed on-and-off for at least several months of this year alone – often for weeks at a time.
Qantas says that its most common enquiries are from customers who wish to change or cancel their flight, use a flight voucher or purchase extra legroom – all things that can be done online (except requesting exit row seats on international flights, which are currently unavailable).
“Most customer queries can be self-managed using the Qantas website and smartphone app, which can be done in a matter of minutes. We’ve also found more customers are turning to our social media channels to get their questions answered,” a Qantas spokesperson told Australian Frequent Flyer.
But some things simply cannot be done online (even though they probably ought to be possible) and require a phone call. For example, it is simply not possible to book a Classic Flight Reward on the Qantas website originating in many overseas countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Sri Lanka, Qatar, Morocco, Malta, Croatia, Cambodia and most other places in South America, Africa and the Middle East. Classic Flight Reward availability is constantly changing, so it’s simply not practical to wait until 24 hours before the flight is due to depart!
My own Qantas call centre experience this week
Earlier this year, I wrote about my experience getting stuck in lockdown in Perth because I was unable to buy a Qantas ticket on a flight home. Nobody at the airport could help, the Qantas website didn’t work and nobody answered the phone – even when using the priority phone number that the Qantas staff gave me at the airport.
This week, I tried calling Qantas to make a booking that could not be completed online. After waiting an hour in the queue as a Gold frequent flyer member, I was put through to somebody at the Cape Town call centre.
It was a simple enough reward booking request – a one-way, point-to-point flight on a Oneworld partner airline. But the operator clearly had no idea what to do and placed me on hold for 10 minutes. He then took me off hold, asked me to repeat the airport code of the airport I wanted to fly from, then put me on hold for another 15 minutes before the call was disconnected.
If this is the service I received as a Gold member, I’d hate to think what the Qantas call centre experience is like if you don’t have any status!
I tried calling again the next morning and waited 47 minutes to speak to somebody else at the Cape Town call centre. This lady placed me on hold before I could even tell her where I wanted to fly to! She then asked for my PNR, which is a bizarre request when I said I wanted to make a new booking. Eventually, I decided to end the call because the lady was giving me a lot of incorrect information and could not help me.
During my long wait on hold, I was told “it’s time to rediscover the Qantas difference”. I have, and I don’t like it.
In fact, when given a choice, I’m now choosing Virgin more and more for domestic flights. Why? Because if something goes wrong, I know somebody will at least answer the phone within a few minutes!
The Qantas call centre has multiple problems
Sadly, there isn’t just one problem with the Qantas call centre. There are several compounding issues at play…
1. The very long wait times
If you have Platinum One status, you can contact the excellent VIP Service Team and get any issues resolved quickly. Similarly, if you have Platinum status, you should be given priority in the call centre queue and be put through to a Qantas Premium call centre agent where possible.
But for the vast majority of Qantas customers, the (lack of) service has become beyond a joke. Qantas customers are regularly complaining of waiting more than three hours on hold, which is totally unacceptable for any business that claims to care about its customers. Even a standard hold time of more than five minutes is insulting.
In a statement to Australian Frequent Flyer, Qantas acknowledged that the current call centre wait times are not acceptable.
But the airline insists that the current volume of calls is unusually high. It says call volumes have increased by 50% over the past week following the announcement of the Queensland border opening and government responses to the Omicron variant.
“Continual border closures and openings have been incredibly challenging for our customers and this has driven huge spikes in calls to our call centres, and regrettably our customers have been experiencing longer wait times as a result,” a Qantas spokesperson said.
“These wait times are not acceptable, and we apologise to customers who have waited so long to get through to us. Our customers have been very understanding and we appreciate their patience as our teams work hard to respond to enquiries as quickly as possible, and reduce the wait times.
“Since January we have added hundreds of new agents and we are training and cross training more.
“When we know there is likely to be a spike in calls, we are rostering on more agents. However, the large spikes in calls are being driven by changes to government border restrictions and we don’t get advanced warning when announcements or changes are going to be made.”
If you do need to call Qantas, CHOICE suggests calling before 9am on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Alternatively, if your enquiry is not urgent, you could try messaging Qantas on Facebook or Twitter.
2. Some call centre staff lack the necessary skills & knowledge
What’s worse than waiting for 3 hours on hold? Waiting 3 hours on hold, only to then speak to somebody who is unable to help you.
Qantas has call centres in Hobart, Auckland, Manila and Cape Town. (There’s also a Sydney call centre but this does not take calls from the public.) The operation of the Cape Town call centre is outsourced to a company called Mindpearl.
To be clear, the staff at the Australian and New Zealand call centres are generally excellent. They’re knowledgeable, competent, efficient and provide good customer service.
I’ve had mixed experiences with the Philippines call centre – some good, and some bad. But my experiences with the outsourced South African call centre have been consistently woeful. I’ve been unable to get assistance with basic tasks like booking or changing a flight, and have been regularly provided with incorrect information by staff at this call centre.
I also recently spoke to an Australian stuck in London who was given totally wrong information by the Qantas call centre about Australian border requirements, which led them to buy a Qantas ticket from London to Perth via Darwin that they couldn’t use.
The Mindpearl staff at the Cape Town call centre are usually friendly and seem to be trying their best. But it regularly takes these staff a very long time to perform basic tasks – if they are even able to assist at all. They are not Qantas staff members, clearly need more training, don’t seem to have access to the same IT systems as staff at the Hobart or Auckland call centres, and I get the impression that they are not empowered to take ownership of problems.
The South African call centre also routinely cannot see flight availability that operators in the Australian or New Zealand call centres can see. Sometimes, they will even tell you that flights which are currently available for anyone to book on the Qantas website are unavailable. This is a serious problem that often makes this call centre unusable from a customer’s perspective.
If Qantas is not prepared to invest in improving the service provided by its outsourced South African call centre, it should stop wasting its customers’ time and shut it down.
Qantas says that it uses call centres in different time zones, including in Cape Town, to allow it to answer customer queries 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But calls are regularly being answered by staff at the Cape Town call centre during Australian business hours, when it would be the middle of the night in South Africa. Clearly, there is a cost-saving element to this.
3. Many calls are being disconnected
There have also been countless recent reports of calls simply being disconnected or dropping out while customers were waiting on hold. The customer then has to call again, being taken back to the end of the very long queue for another depressing round of the Qantas call centre lottery.
In most instances, this is probably caused by an IT issue (which I sure hope is being investigated!). But there have also been multiple reports of call centre staff simply hanging up on customers. This was already happening last year, and it’s still a problem.
Here are just a few recent posts from the AFF forum:
Lasted 2hrs 45min on hold tonight before getting a computerized voice saying “due to a system problem we cannot complete your call” and disconnecting 😡
– N860CR, 25 October 2021
Another person wrote:
4 hours on hold. Get through to OS call Centre. Explain my situation. I’m put on hold so he can investigate. 30 minutes goes by and I receive the QF ‘thank you for your call, have a nice day’. The end. Horrendous customer service.
– Inuniform, 4 November 2021
Another wrote:
Called them 12.30AM to change the dates of flights (not possible online). 90 minute hold on 131313, reached an agent only to be hung up on after another 30 minutes.
– Peso, 30 November 2021
And then there’s this post:
When I lost my connection, I immediately tried phoning Qantas again. After a 65-minute hold, Agent 2 answered the phone and said “Due to high volume calls I am having to cut this call” and then she hung up!!!!
– MTAB, 29 November 2021
4. This has already been a problem for years – so far, nothing has improved
The most frustrating part about all of this is that many of these problems have already existed for years. On multiple occasions, Qantas has promised to address these problems – such as in May this year. So far, not much seems to have changed.
Given the number of years that the call centre has continued to be a problem, one could conclude that Qantas management is either unaware of the problems or does not care. Both would be inexcusable.
I would challenge any person in Qantas management to phone the call centre as a regular Bronze frequent flyer member and experience the “Qantas difference” for themselves.
As well as being a terrible customer experience and damaging the airline’s brand, it costs actual money if customers are unable to even make a booking!
Australian Frequent Flyer asked Qantas what it was doing to improve its call centre service. The airline told us that it has invested in new technology during the pandemic to make the call centre more flexible and easier to scale up and down, based on the level of demand. The airline hopes to have this new technology in place by March 2022.
“While it was great that international flying came back early, it meant our plan to have agents trained and ready to go was disrupted. We didn’t have the lead time required to train our agents as intended,” the Qantas spokesperson said.
Let’s hope that this time, Qantas puts in a serious effort to improve the quality of the service provided by its call centre. Qantas customers are sick of being treated with such contempt, and some have already started voting with their feet and wallets. The call centre has become an absolute disgrace and Qantas should be ashamed of the service it is (not) providing.
Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: Qantas Call Centre Long Wait Times
