While on the phone with US Airways today completing an award reservation, the call got cut off. I redialed and was elated to be connected to the same agent I had just been speaking with a moment earlier. She was shocked to hear my voice again, but I actually was not. This happens fairly often for me…on several airlines. Is it just plain luck or is there is technology in place that gets me back to the same agent?
Booking complex awards often requires a telephone call to complete and working on Skype or with T-Mobile on my cell phone, it is not uncommon to run into connection issues and the occasional dropped call. It certainly does not happen every time and in fact does not happen on most occasions, but it has happened twice in the last week–once with United, once with US Airways: same agent two calls in a row.
I’ve also had this happen with Aeroplan, British Airways, Delta, and American–at least a dozen times in the last year. I call airline elite lines, which means the agents I deal with come from a smaller pool, but I know there are still hundreds (if not thousands) of Delta, Aeroplan, American, and United agents that I could be connected with. The US Airways’ Chairman desk is smaller, but still has about 100 agents on duty at any given time. This makes my odds much slimmer than calling a small call center like Flying Blue, with only about 20 agents answering telephones.
I did some light google research but could not find anything, so I thought I would pose the question here. Is there some sort of VOIP technology that will recognize caller ID and route customers who quickly call back to the same agent they just spoke with?
If it all is just luck of the draw, with my odds maybe I should head out to Vegas…
UPDATE: It happened again tonight with US Airways! I asked the agent about it and she said there is “a system in place” to make this happen, FWIW.
I think what’s important here is that you call back immediately. Instead of asking how many agents are there at any given time, the question should probably be how many agents are free right when your agent just got off the phone. I would think that the fraction of busy agents is somewhat close to 1 since the airline would otherwise reduce the numbers (of course, this is a stochastic process and, more importantly, the fraction depends on the absolute numbers with larger staff leading to a higher fraction since the variance goes down) which means that with 100 agents of whom maybe 90% are busy, this leaves you with a 1/10 chance of getting connected to your old pal from 30 seconds ago.
This is a common configuration in call centers where people are likely to call back (tech support, etc). If the agent to whom you last spoke is free or projected to be free in a reasonable time, you’ll be queued up for their next call. It saves some “explaining” time and makes it harder to bypass policies if you hang up after getting someone who is a stickler for the rules.
This has happened to me with United a few times as well. DirecTV, interestingly, actually has their voice-prompt ask if you are calling back, re: your prior issue, if you call back in quick succession. They don’t route you to the same person every time but it is a nice feature and acknowledgment that they know you just called.
It’s not blind luck. I work with routing systems and can tell you that not enough companies do this. It is easy as pie to route the same caller id or customer number to the same agent as before, as long as they aren’t helping someone else.
Matthew,
There most certainly is technology behind this! In the contact center world that is called “Last Agent Routing” and/or an “Intelligent Front Door”. That same technology is being used to see that you were just on the airlines web site looking at award tickets, now your calling in, an assumption can be made that you are calling about that same award flight and not only route your call to the correct type of agent but even provide that agent, or automated system, with the flight information, numbers, dates, etc so that they can begin helping you immediately. I am currently involved in a large project doing this very thing. Bringing together Phone calls, email, chat, mobile and web, to make the customer interaction easier and more fluid!
I hope that helps!
Robert A