Why is American Airlines call time so long?
The reason why American Airlines' call times are so long has been discussed in the foregoing paragraphs.
American Airlines is among the largest entities in the airline industry, with a large variety of flights that transport hundreds of thousands of passengers daily within the United States and internationally. However, in recent years, American Airlines has been rated poorly for the quality of customer relations or response, particularly on the airline's telephone customer service, where customers are subjected to long waiting periods just to speak with a reservation officer. So why exactly are the call times of American Airlines so long and in many instances, it takes over 30 minutes to be connected to an agent? I identified the following major factors:
Increased Call Volumes It’s simple: as one of the prominent US-based airlines, American Airlines is bound to receive a very high number of calls daily. From people booking flight tickets, changing their existing flight tickets, or those who need clarifications on baggage allowances to those who need help in managing their flight disruptions, the phone lines are constantly busy from morning till the close of business. Such calls have grown more frequent in recent years as well, particularly after the United States joined forces with US Airways to create the largest airline in the world. This is because more passengers are flying with this airline, and as such, the call volumes have increased.
Staffing Shortages Besides, high call volumes suggest that there should be adequate reservation staff to accommodate the high traffic. However recent developments and articles have indicated that American Airlines has been experiencing a crisis of staffing where it is short-staffed; for instance, there were not enough reservation agents who could attend to the numerous calls it receives. When Covid-19 hit and the world’s air traffic slowed to a trickle, many carriers such as American, encouraged early retirements and let go of a lot of employees. When the skies started to fill up again, there were not enough people to cover shifts. Lately, American has tried to hire more reservations personnel, but the company continues to struggle to match the number.
Poor Scheduling by Management Worse still for the inconveniences that come with long hold times, some analysts have pointed out that American Airlines badly manages the schedules of reservation agents. Instead of increasing the number of agents during such times that are characteristically likely to receive a high number of calls, it seems that America has perhaps had irregular staffing schedules that do not correspond with high call traffic at certain times of the day or during particular days of the week. The end is customers waiting for their turn because the number of agents who are taking calls is small compared to the number of people requiring the service. Some of the possible ways of reducing waiting time can include having a more efficient way of scheduling.
Bugs in Phone Systems Another possible reason likely applicable to aging legacy airline companies like American Airlines could be obsolete telephones and dialler software in the company’s reservations call center. This means that prescriptively, including elements that make wait times look longer than they are or elements that may be causing inefficient call routing, Telecom systems might improve and facilitate the call and its successive stages to be smoother. The frustrated callers voiced that it seems Americans have worse call queue systems than their global counterparts.
Offshoring Call Centers In an effort to cut more of its expenses, American Airlines has continued to outsource more of its reservations call centers to other nations, including Egypt and Argentina. Foreign call center workers are living in America and doing the best they can, but cultural and language differences present themselves and disrupt the flow of communication with our passengers from American Airlines. Translation services and extended periods of customer waiting time are likely to be incurred if the call is routed outside the country, and this is not desirable.
Prioritizing Other Channels Discussing the possibility of the company deliberately understaffing the phone support, some analysts suggest that American Airlines is attempting to guide its clients to book directly through the airline’s website and app. American’s profitability pressures make the airline want to reduce personnel costs and hence avoid the hiring of more reservation agents. Thus, the company is willing to allow its customers to be aggrieved by long on-hold periods to force them to seek self-service. However, this is likely to push away the end user, who is not technologically conversant.
To sum it all up, it can be understood that the very long hold times in American Airlines are a result of high call traffic, absence of adequate personnel in the offices of reservations agents, poor scheduling by managers, archaic telecom technologies used in the business, and overall company policy of encouraging cost-cutting measures such as directing customers towards self-service means rather than phone support. These call-wait experiences are quite long for human beings, especially for the paying passengers of American Airlines. It only results in them wondering why a world-class airline such as America still cannot handle its call centers better in the present time. It would be wise for the American company to make investments in the call service operation to prevent the hold time from reaching a stage where customers get extremely agitated. Most of the current delays are intolerable for any airline that wants to be responsive to its customers.
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