Frontier Airlines no longer has a customer service phone line.
We don’t know why, but the company that once employed over 1,000 people abruptly eliminated the number of the company’s contact center, which was one of the largest in the industry. It also cut back on salaries for employees who had the most experience in customer service. It made people without those skills less likely to get hired.
“It’s surprising when they do that kind of thing,” an employee explains to me. “But people understand why they do it, and they understand why they’re being made redundant.”
When I ask customers what they thought of Frontier, the biggest response they had is that employees weren’t helpful. Customers complained about getting calls or emails that were either too long or had the wrong tone.
“When I first went on the phone with someone, I thought it was a sales call,” an employee told me. “It’s always that way with Frontier — they sell you the dream, but they don’t follow through.”
The most frequent complaint customers have about Frontier — or any major U.S. airline — is that they do not have enough seats to get where they want to go.
Every month, the company will cut back on service and leave stranded customers sitting alone on a flight until they are able to go through the process again next month.
The most frequent complaint customers have about the industry is that it is overburdened because too many people want to fly on them.
“For the last 20 years, you have a choice of flying with another major airline,” a customer who works for the TSA says about what he would like to see changed at the country’s biggest carriers. “Or you can fly with your mom for a few weeks and then get another airline.”
The airlines have been trying to tackle both of these problems over the last decade. Frontier has also been trying to solve its own in recent years.
But the airline has had to work within a system that doesn’t offer customer service to travelers looking for the level of customer service they expect.
In order to create more seating and more options, Frontier has had to reduce hours at its three international hubs.
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