Cunard and P&O plea to agents to cut down on calls
Cunard and P&O Cruises have admitted agents are experiencing ‘excessive’ call wait times just weeks after a sales team restructure.
Agents have taken to social media to complain that the wait time on the phones has suddenly increased, with one reporting she had to wait for more than two hours to get help with a booking before giving up.
However, Shane Riley, who heads the newly-created retail partnerships team, said the majority of agents’ queries could be sorted out online.
Writing on the social media site Travel Gossip today, Riley said: "Over 70% of our agent support calls yesterday could have been resolved using our self-serve online systems.
"We have put together several useful guides to help you to utilise online systems and help reduce the call wait time for those agent partners that need support for things that cannot be completed online."
He said the company had devised ‘cheat sheets’ to help agents.
"I would plead with our agent partners to please utilise our online systems as much as possible," he added. "This will really help us break the call wait cycle and get on top of the situation."
However, some agents responded saying certain transactions such as add-ons and amendments couldn’t be done online.
Riley also asked agents not to tell customers to contact the cruise lines themselves, as they were receiving duplicate calls from both passengers and agents relating to the same query.
In an official statement, the company said: "Following an increase in bookings and agent contact we are working hard to handle all calls from agents and deal with responses as swiftly as possible. Today we have increased the team to support call handling and we thank agents for their patience. We expect to rectify the situation as soon as possible."
Earlier this year, P&O and Cunard created a new sales structure, which increased the size of the sales team by 30% to 46 people. However, as part of the restructure, 10 people were made redundant.
The new structure saw the creation of three teams – national partnerships, managed by Nathaniel Sherborne, retail partnerships led by Riley and sales operations headed by Natasha Richardson.
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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