Frontier’s New Customer Experience

If you are a Frontier Airlines customer, talking to a human is no longer an option. Instead, you can use their mobile app or website to chat, either with chatbots or human agents.

No voice calls, no problem

Some travel experts don’t see eliminating voice calls as a problem. David Slotnick, aviation writer at The Points Guy, told Marketplace that the new policy would probably not cause problems for Frontier. “Inconveniences or discomfort” are part of the low-cost airline business model, and that its customers would accept the change as long as they continued to get the lowest fare.

My contributor colleague Ben Baldanza, former CEO of Spirit Airlines, dismisses negative reactions to the Frontier change as “much ado about nothing.” He notes that it will still be possible to chat with human reps, and that Frontier’s customers accept fewer amenities to get the cheapest flights. Baldanza predicts that eventually other airlines may follow suit.

Good for the customer or the company?

Often companies present changes in customer experience as a benefit to the customer, even when they are primarily benefitting the company. A supermarket that installs self-scan checkout lanes may tout them as a convenience for customers in a hurry. That might be true in some cases – if I have a couple of items in my basket, it’s faster to zip through the self-checkout. When customers are forced to check themselves out because of insufficient cashier lanes, though, the benefit accrues to the company. Customers are inconvenienced to reduce the company’s cost of doing business.

It’s difficult to see any way that Frontier’s customers benefit from losing a communications channel. In particular, airline call centers are often used by customers with problems – emergency-dictated flight changes, rescheduling due to airport or aircraft problems, etc. It’s difficult to carry on a chat conversation on a mobile app while you are running from one terminal to another.

Customer experience expert Jay Baer thinks Frontier’s move is shortsighted, noting that 74% of American consumers prefer telephone over other contact methods when they need to communicate with a business.

Why would a brand eliminate the channel strongly preferred by their customers?

Call centers are more than cost centers

One argument some businesses use for reducing call center costs is that they don’t generate many sales. It’s often true that call centers offer few opportunities for upselling or making new sales. But, that’s the wrong lens to use.

Call center interactions are critical to customer loyalty and word of mouth. Gartner data show that 96% of customers who had a high-effort customer service experience reported being disloyal to the brand. That’s more than TEN times as high as customers who said they had a low-effort experience.

Similarly, customers who have a high-effort experience are far more likely to say bad things about the brand to others.

If customers are pushed into a communication channel other than the one they prefer, it will seem more effortful. Often, customers phone customer service because they couldn’t do what they wanted to do in the company’s app or on their website. Keeping them in what they see as a dysfunctional channel will further frustrate them.

Of course, voice interactions aren’t always low effort. If the call center reps are poorly trained or lack the tools to promptly resolve customer issues, they can create as much frustration as an incompetent chatbot.

The future isn’t here yet

There’s little doubt that machine learning and artificial intelligence will revolutionize customer service interactions. Voice menu systems and chatbots can already handle routine inquiries without human involvement. And, the recently announced ChatGPT is creating excitement with its versatility. Nevertheless, today’s commercial systems still lack the power and adaptability to interpret and solve more complex problems.

I find today’s chatbots mostly a barrier to getting to a human. The bots usually offer information I could find myself via app or website, or misinterpret my requests in sometimes comical ways. So, just as I found it necessary to yell “representative” at balky voice menu systems, now I find I must type variations of “human” to bypass inane chatbot flow charts.

While I haven’t interacted with Frontier’s chat system, I hope their chatbots are helpful but also aren’t too difficult to bypass for customers who want a human chat. It’s important that Frontier make these chat interactions low effort and, at the same time, convey as much warmth and humanity as a voice conversation would.

Chat missteps

One commenter on Baldanza’s article was sharply critical of Frontier’s chat system, noting they were disconnected from their chat after a two hour wait. If you have just one communication channel for customers, it really needs to work properly.

My own recent chat session with a major airline was at least as frustrating as that commenter’s. (On a small island far from the U.S., late at night, chat was the only channel working for me.) Over several hours I experienced every chat problem imaginable. There were long delays in responses, some 10+ minutes. I was disconnected from the chat multiple times. Twice, the agent I was dealing with disappeared and was replaced by a new agent unfamiliar with my problem. I gave up when the flight I had been trying to book finally had no remaining seats. For this airline, clearly chat isn’t ready to be a primary channel.

Airline Customer Experience

Perhaps eliminating voice interaction is on-brand for budget-focused Frontier, but the major airlines seem unlikely to follow suit soon. Indeed, after a long decline in customer experience, the major airlines have begun taking steps to improve that experience – even for non-elite flyers.

I do expect that the major airlines will build out robust chat systems, both automated and human. Rather than abruptly pushing customers to that channel, though, they will likely let that switch happen organically. When people find chat more convenient, they will use it. Today, for example, I almost always interact with American Express using chat – it just works.

Last year, United introduced text or video chat as an option to get in-airport help. Instead of standing in line for help from a gate agent, flyers can scan a QR code to be connected instantly.

If that service is as convenient and seamless as promised, flyers will gravitate to it with no pressure.

Focus on the customer

For many years, airlines diminished the experience of the average traveler – smaller seats, new fees for checked bags, slower boarding, fewer food options, jammed cabins, and more. These changes were used as cost reduction measures as major airlines tried to compete with discount brands. These efforts seem to have mostly ended. Perhaps they have hit the limit of what’s possible.

Now, many airlines have tried to improve customer experience, albeit in modest ways.

Will recent improvements in customer experience continue, or will Frontier’s move lower the bar for the rest of the industry? Leave a comment with your thoughts.