Getting "brain dead" Frontier chat agents
 

As a Frontier customer, I wind up having to use their chat function pretty often, mostly because Frontier keeps cancelling my reservations. (Sometimes I have to use it because I want to cancel my reservation and get a refund). More often than not, the process works in a reasonable way. But about 25% of the time, it's just super-weird because it feels like I'm chating with a complete idiot. Like, today, Frontier cancelled a connecting flight reservation and they had no plausible alternatives that day or the day before or after (every published connection was more than 10 hours). But they did have a plausible connection 2 days earlier. The system doesn't automatically look for 2-day-away connections, so I tried the chat function and asked for that flight change. The chat agent simply couldn't understand my request. I had to repeat it 3 or 4 times in slightly different ways until he "got it." As I said, this happens about 1 in 4 times. Is it a language problem or an intelligence problem -- or both? It's obviously really bad for the consumer. Super time consuming and frustrating. I can't imagine asking them to solve a more difficult problem. Finally, after much additional nonsense (like repeating my name? and address and such) and 55 minutes of time, my reservation was fixed. (Although I wasn't 100% sure he did it correctly until I went in and looked at my reservation). This would be a less than 10 minute phone call with a normal airline Sigh.

I have decided that until I am ready to pay to fly on some other carrier, there is no point in wasting my time with these "customer care " folks at Frontier. But it's not just Frontier. I had to call ATT Wireless for a problem and the experience was equal to Frontier. Same for Avis Rent a Car. These companies are all charging suspicious fees, having poor speaking agents with no authority to fix issues answer the phones, and just parrotting corporate doublespeak. I actually had a super experience on a Frontier flight in both directions and I wrote a letter to the corporate hq and also to the airport desk complimenting how the flight crew and the gate agents went out of their way to treat me nice as an Elite member. I have not been responded to in any fashion by Frontier acknowledging the letter. They just don't care. Pay the Carrier Interface Charge, that's all that matters to them.

No question that customer service at big American corporations has gotten worse the past decade, and keeps getting worse. Maybe AI could actually help? :) The problem is air travel can be a bit complicated. I assume the big airlines know this and care a bit more about who they hire, but even their service has been getting "dumbed down." Frontier's chat function is obviously much worse than, say, calling American Airlines with a problem, but it's not materially different than calling your cell phone company or most other large US businesses. Every time I have a problem, I alway hope I can fix it via self-help, because I know the alternatives will be worse. Frontier could easily give people two days on either side of their cancelled trip to pick an alternative flight via their website -- a particularly useful feature given Frontier doesn't fly many routes daily -- but they don't want to, so I had to experience customer service hell.

Yep, totally agree. And 25% seems about the odds. I've needed to split a reservation so I can make changes for one person. This is a pretty routine task on most carriers. But by golly, I've had Frontier agents that have absolutely zero clue what I am talking about. And then you get some that just do it. It's crazy.

I have to wonder how many chats they are fielding simulateously. They MUST be doing something, because it often takes a couple minutes for them to respond to each thing you say. The forced multi-tasking would be hard for anyone. But layer on English as a second language, and then a lack of subject matter expertise and it quickly becomes a not great customer experience.

Yeah, I've also noticed the lag and thought that they must be required to "multitask," and that's the cause (or at least a major contributory factor) to the braindead-ness of a lot of the communications. They're just not paying enough attention to YOUR problem to understand it.

Splitting a reservation? Yup, that's exactly the type of small problem that a major airline could address in a couple of minutes that would be a complete wildcard getting Frontier to fix.

Years ago, I did some consulting for a (smaller) company on their customer service. That company actually cared enough about customer service to bring in a consultant, so they were already in a separate class, but their agents working chat managed about 20 simultaneous chat conversations. On top of that, they had a small sales quota they were expected to meet with upsales, substitutions, etc. Some analysis found that they had only the most basic information about anything actually going on in the company or the industry, and I theorized at the time that that was probably intentional.

Since every contact was considered a sales opportunity, it was, to them, a good thing if someone gave up and contacted again later. They were in such a silo, they couldn't see and didn't care that the behavior was bad for the company overall, they just wanted to meet their short-term goals. I think a lot of other companies operate the same way, and this is how American customer service slid down to less "service" and more somewhere between "inconvenience" and "malicious contact." In corporate eyes, customer service is either a sales opportunity where every customer is basically a mark to be ripped off, OR it's a cost center that gets the absolute minimum investment at the expense of quality and satisfaction.

I retired from the legacy telephone company ( Verizon) years back, about the time all these methods you have correctly identified were destroying the company and stock price . These companies are able to push the service bar lower and lower as the up and coming generation of consumers do not remember how good things used to be, hence they consider these insults to our dignity and intelligence to be acceptable and they continue to patronize the offending companies. Now Frontier seems to be fessing up to what they are doing. The customer care ( what a contradiction) person I had my last dispute with accurately stated to me that Frontier is " AN ultra-cheap airline", those words exactly, and therefore I am getting what I pay for. Can't argue there, the same Baltimore flight would cost double on American Airlines. But I used to pay double or 2.5 times more to fly on Continental and I was Elite, almost always in First Class, and I was a loyal customer. I felt that the cost was worth the better treatment. So I guess this is what we are stuck with until some paradign shift in public attitude occurs.

I think it's just another factor that will hurt Frontier's business prospects. When everything goes right, you can get your money's worth with Frontier's "meh" experience. But, eventually, you're going to have a problem and Frontier is going to let you down and then deeply annoy you. Many of those customers will not come back. If Frontier is going to ditch telephone customer service, they need to make their chat experience reasonable and predictable. It's currently not.

History shows most of these "never again" customers will come back the next time Frontier is the least expensive option. Many air travel consumers seem to value low cost above all else as evidenced by the lackluster success of "mainstream premium" offerings and the relative success of basic economy-type products.

Right. Of course, most of the time the customers who say they will "Never Fly Airline X" are being irrational. Airline X usually IS fine, but they just had a bad, unlucky experience. The unhappy passenger probably settles down and realizes it and, when necessary, flies Airline X again.

I'm not sure about Frontier's unhappy customers. Their unhappiness may be rational and long-lasting. Heck, I won't fly Frontier unless it's an absolutely crazy deal, because I know I may have a bad experience.

They are Philippine chat agents who don't understand half the terminology we use. While yes they are educated in English their comprehension is just terrible and you really can't get anywhere with them. I asked for something as simple as miles credit for a flight I took 10 days ago that the system shows as 0 miles and the lady answers "The flight has been fully boarded and we cannot give you credit". Like ... are you talking about?

Companies like Frontier see these big savings using foreign call centers and act as if they are giving us as good an option but they are not. These are people who have never flown on Frontier and maybe never flown on any airline. They don't understand US customers and what we are asking for and are given about 5 canned answers to give us when they can't solve a problem.

When I was dealing with Barclay Philippines customer service rep. If I use a few Phillippine words I seem to get good customer service. I said are you in the Philippines! She answer yes with a scared voice. I said Salmat (Thank you). Thank you, for your help po. Po means sir or mana and can be put at the end of any greeting. I also said Mubohay which is like aloha. Anyway with these few nice words, my interest fees were all waived and we are talking about $40,000 balance so it was $500 dollars. Sometimes being nice can get you far when the agent has dealt with lots of upset people already.

Frontier again cancelled my flight and I needed to chat to get replacement flights (two days later!). Completely absurd experience: it took almost an hour once the agent came into the chat. He seemed ridiculously confused and distracted -- I do wonder how many chats they must do at the same time. I just had to keep repeating what I wanted. And then he magically understood the flights I wanted and I was done. I do not think normal human beings could tolerate this experience.

Another month, another cancellation of my itinerary from Frontier -- this time only 6 weeks before my travel date. Really hard to do business with this airline. I STRONGLY recommend against booking a connecting flight on this airline in advance. The odds that the connection will actually exist on your future travel date are low. I think mine has now been cancelled 3 times.

The chat customer service remains both pathetic and hilarious. Expect your chat agent to not understand even the simplest situation. Just be patient and kind and get them focused on the problem. It will likely take you almost an hour, but everything reasonable I've asked for I've ultimately received.

Until, of course, they cancel my itinerary again! :)

I somewhat disagree on the strategy. I've had a couple chat agents that simply cannot comprehend what I need, and insist on reading a script. I wasted an hour with them last week, and finally gave up, and started a new chat. The new guy had my WORKS ticket refunded to my CC within 5 minutes.