QUANTAS Case Study Customer Service Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

QUANTAS Customer Service - Case Study Example Assuming that each meaningful interaction will last five minutes to make the customer feel â€Å"important† and running over the entire month (Qantas Airlines). QANTAS would require 7,111 customer representatives which will cost approximately $213 million a year. Airline ticketing before the advent of computers and the internet was the most complex process in the entire airline industry. At the onset airline reservations are called in by the customers for available flights of a particular route. The information from the call would then be given to a central ticketing and monitoring center that creates â€Å"cards† for every call. These reservations are then matched with the available seats of the flight and the central booking for the flight will then be updated at the central booking office. The information about the seat availability of each flight will in turn be transmitted to all the booking office to ensure that they do not overbook a flight. Realizing the expandi ng role of air travel and the upward trend of its patrons American Airlines in 1946 installed the first electromechanical reservoir system (Winston). And in 1953 American Airlines started the SABRE project and it was finally installed and used in 1964 (Wilkinson). For many years to come until the present SABRE remains the yardstick in ticketing service provisioning. Several alliances worldwide have significantly contributed to SABRE and its profitability given the complexity and expense of airline reservation. ONE World is such an alliance, this particular alliance does not limit itself to ticketing and reservation however. ONE World also leverages for its members bulk purchasing of parts and services practically positioning its members to capitalize on its strategic strength and presence worldwide. In the context of customer service provisioning ONE World would enable QANTAS airlines’ customer to book flights practically in every parts of the world. To illustrate: A QANTAS p assenger who wants to go to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania would first have to book a flight from wherever parts of Australia he is using the local QANTAS hub to the international hub of QANTAS in Queensland, Australia going to Detroit Metro in the United States. From Detroit Metro the QANTAS passenger will have to board a plane to of a ONE World member airline to Lehigh Valley International Airport and then drive by car to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Instead of calling several airlines to determine what flights are available going to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania the QANTAS passenger would just need to place a single call and all the bookings will be arranged using the ticketing and airline reservation system of ONE World. The whole process, without the assistance of ONE World’s system would have taken the entire day for the passenger. However, given that every reservation office of QANTAS is connected to ONE World the whole process could only take a couple of minutes. Since practically it would seem that QANTAS is the ONE making all the arrangements and the interfacing in the customer’s behalf, it would seem as far as the passenger is concerned it is QANTAS who have made his life easier. Case Study The challenges that QANTAS face in the next couple of years in order to remain competitive is to drive its operating cost further without compromising the quality of its service. As per the case study material presented, QANTAS’ edge has always been its ability to manage change effectively and efficiently.