The entire travel industry faces a resurgence of customers in the waning pandemic. Coupled with a drastic labor shortage and they slam head-on into new challenges. One of the newer challenges is trying to find quicker, easier, and cheaper ways to operate their businesses. Frontier Airlines has decided to accomplish all of that by eliminating its customer service call center and hotline.
Frontier Airlines No Longer Has Customer Service Line
In a very unique move, Frontier Airlines will no longer receive calls from customers searching for a live agent to help them through any of their needs. Instead, callers will be met with a prerecorded message “At Frontier, we offer the lowest fares in the industry by operating our airline as efficiently as possible.” While the budget airline is known for cutting costs in many ways, they are one of only a select few that don’t operate a customer service line.
Frontier spokesperson Jennifer De La Cruz said the move “enables us to ensure our customers get the information they need as expeditiously and efficiently as possible” when confirming the story in an interview with NPR on Saturday. She also said their research showed that customers vastly preferred other customer service methods. Any flyers looking for help need to go to a 24/7 chatbot on their website, social media, or WhatsApp.
Frontier Airlines has had a Series of Hits
Not in a good way. Over the summer, Frontier Airlines lost out on a bid to merge with a fellow budget airline, Spirit. Spirit decided instead to merge with Frontier’s competitor, JetBlue. That was only the beginning of their problems this year.
The Department of Transportation also hit them this month with the losing end of a giant lawsuit. DOT hit six airlines, of which Frontier was the only US based, with a total of $7.5 million in fines. According to the lawsuit, they are forced to pay $222 million in refunds and a $2.2 million fine. One can’t help but think this new move is partly in an effort to offset that cost.