Air New Zealand outsourcing some call centre roles to the Philippines

Air New Zealand is temporarily outsourcing some call centre roles to the Philippines due to a shortage of staff. But a call centre industry commentator says if companies continue to outsource to other countries, the industry will struggle with shortages and low salaries. Air New Zealand chief customer and sales officer Leanne Geraghty said it had contracted an Australian call centre company with a base in the Philippines, where a team of up to 100 staff would be dedicated to handling online inquiries from Air New Zealand customers. This was on top of the more than 500 call centre staff already in New Zealand. “This is more than pre-Covid, but we’re still not providing the level of responsiveness we’d like to give our customers.” The airline was continuing to recruit within New Zealand was finding it difficult to recruit people for customer care roles. “We are not sending jobs offshore, we are retaining all of our employees and our service partner employees and looking to hire more here locally. “Our intention is to recover our service in the short term and ensure a level of ongoing stability for our customers. Once we recover, and as we continue to enable more capability for customers to self-serve, we will review our resourcing strategy. This includes considering whether this offshore team would be needed in the long term.” Geraghty did not disclose how much the New Zealand or Philippines call centre staff were paid – but according to Seek NZ the roll of call centre operator had an average salary of $55,000 to $60,000.<br/>