oldchinahand

I fully accept that Cathay could -and should -and MUST do better. Last week I had a chat with the club manager re the subject after experiencing the worst ever customer service re re getting a smashed suitcase replaced. over 200 phone calls 10 emails 8 promises (from managers) of call backs - 3 call backs - only when senior managers became involved was the replacement suitcase cost paid . Last week another suitcase was badly damaged in Manila - the third in 6 months....
However from what I read and hear from others and experience myself few airlines offer good phone or on-line customer service these days and most are unacceptably poor..

Who is doing a good job among major Asian /Australasian airlines ?

Qantas is extremely and poor ANZ hardly better- my experience with SIA was poor and Thai atrocious. Turkish have always been and still are a bad joke.
The one time that I had a problem re JAL they were excellent

I find Cathay an excellent airline in all aspects other than on-line and phone customer service and it is damaging both the airlines reputation and causing loyal HKG based customers to use other airlines. CFor many years Cathays customer service was overall good and the HKG based service centre excellent for over 30 years - now it is frankly a bad joke, as is the service from most other airlines.
Moving the call centres to cheap labour countries just is not working and has not improved a dot over the past 4 years.
The other day the operator in Manila's English pronunciation was so poor as to be totally unintelligible . The replacement was better but gabbled so fast as again to be unintelligible. Once i was able to have her slow down it was better but only lasted a couple of sentences. - I gave up... 45 minutes wasted
Fortunately I was able to be put through to a HKG manager but only due to my status as Lifetime invitation diamond , otherwise ?????

SKT-DK

So OP booked one class expecting a discounted upgrade to the next by default, and is now moaning about it not being available? If you want to fly a certain class, book it! Sorry, but that’s all there is to say

US HK UK flyer

More customer service needs to be moved off phones and to chatbots/apps/WhatsApp, and the service on those platforms needs to be improved. This would take care of so much back and forth over English pronounciation. This is not just a CX issue of course but customer service for everything.

moondog

I've been booking a lot more with ctrip recently (when prices are as good or better than direct) because they take customer service seriously...to the extent of being annoying with constant follow up calls, in fact.

They can't always move mountains, but I definitely appreciate them hounding airlines instead of me.

carrotjuice

I disagree. Instead of moving from human to chatbot, CX should make intelligent self service systems so people will use online functions.

For example, if there was an involuntary reschedule of a redemption fight, the system should automatically recognise this and make available redemption seats even when they�re unavailable (not �subject to availability�) and automatically waive any rebooking fees. Currently they treat you as a �regular� change which precipitates a call to get it overwritten by an agent (well, a competent one who knows the correct protocols - and that�s like finding unicorn dust).

oldchinahand

Correction
My above post should have read
'20 phone calls' not 200.

percysmith

Not likely CX will acquire that kind of technical ability in foreseeable future.

But then again, who does? The US carriers probably have it, but I don't think even BA, SQ nor QF can.

timesnaps

Actually wasnt expecting anything, but since I have the miles, I wanted to put them to use. I fully understand that there might be no availabilty, but that has nothing to do with the insane and utterly useless online (chat) communication that they offer. To make matters worse, almost none of the websites they have where one could actually get things done works. Purchase miles, Upgrade requests both not working (to name but a few). Please read more carefully, before posting your replies next time.

timesnaps

Just a few of the many error pages...

percysmith

Almost a decade ago, when I was still buying tix from TAs, my TA was able to advise buy an upgrade eligible fare and give her my AM details so she can immediately lock in a miles upgrade <� do any TAs retain the ability to do this?

littlevoices

A discussion a few days ago with American Express travel (for business) implies that they are no longer able to do this, you need to go via Cathay for them. That seems to imply that the bigger firms no longer do, not sure about the smaller ones.

US HK UK flyer

I agree they should do stuff like this too; it's not mutually exclusive with moving customer service that does still need to happen to text format. Give me as much control over my options on the website, and then for anything I can't do on my own, move it to a text format so I'm not playing a game of mutually unrecognizable accents with someone.

Chatter

Can�t agree more with CX�s horrible IT platform. I logged at least two complaints this years as it the issue caused me extra hours to deal with it. I recently flew them NRT-HKG, I received the first boarding notification from CX app while the plane was taxiing already.

Another incident was with the Manila customer service agent. I was trying to get a multi segment fare which CX�s website couldn�t price due to certain restrictions, the agent couldn�t come up with an answer claiming system error on his end and he promised to return my call. Instead of waiting, I called the Chinese line and I got the answer within 10 mins. After 90 mins, I finally received a call from Manila with the same answer. While the GZ centre is a hit or miss, the Manila one is just terrible.