American Airlines is laying off 656 contact center staff to “elevate” its customer support.
While this may seem like an oxymoron, the airline plans to consolidate its contact center team into a single unit.
That team will handle the high-stake service customer conversations while it will outsource lower-value interactions.
In addition, the airline has pledged to expand its effort to combat customer pain points and focus on first contact resolution (FCR) to drive down contact volumes further.
Indeed, the airline believes that improvements in its first-contact resolution rates may decrease call volumes by as much as 20 percent.
The 656 workers represent 8.2 percent of its 8,000 staff working within the airline’s customer service division, none of whom are represented by a union, according to Bloomberg.
The airline shared the news with KXAS-TV: “Today, we announced updates to our contact centre organisation that will help us better serve our customers.
As part of these updates, we are creating a new Customer Success team that will be dedicated to providing more convenient, elevated support to American Airlines customers with some of their most complex travel needs.
Carolyne Truelove, American Airlines Vice President of Reservations and Service Recovery, reiterated this decision to drive customer service performance to Dallas News.
“We are laser-focused on improving your customer experience. With that focus is digging deep into where we have customer pain points,” she said
The airline staff that are being made redundant will continue to work for the company until March 30th.
In the meantime, they can apply for one of the 135 open positions on the customer success team, as well as any of the 800 vacancies at the airline.
If the affected employees do not take up another role at the company, they will be given severance pay and receive job placement support.
Robert D. Ison, CEO, President, and Director of American Airlines Group Inc. spoke about its customer service successes over the past year at its quarterly earnings call last week:
Over the past year, we have made changes to our distribution strategy to give customers direct improved access to our best products and enable American to provide better customer service to the individual traveller.
“We’re very encouraged by the results. Customers who shop directly with us have a more enjoyable experience and are 11 points more likely to recommend American than those shopping in traditional outlets. They are purchasing more valuable content and doing so at lower expense.”
In November 2022, Frontline Airlines took a different approach to rethinking customer service, which involved ditching its telephone support line. As such, customers can only talk to a live agent via webchat.
In June last year, Frontline Airlines discussed its decision to ditch telephone customer support with CX Today Founder Rob Scott.
