Air India Ticket Call Centre Shut Down

Monday, 18th February 2013 at 06:44am

Passengers were surprised Tuesday when Air India's ticket call center shut down without prior notice leaving them without option than go to their travel agents.

The flag carrier had ended its contract with InterGlobe Technologies (IGT) on January 31, 2013 to manage its call center. IGT is part of the country's travel group InterGlobe Enterprises from which InterGlobe Aviation (operator of IndiGo) is also a part of.

The problem arose when Sutherland Global Services, the new call center for Air India, failed to function as expected by February 1, 2013. Sutherland Global Services is a BPO and analytic services company based in the US with over 35 locations across 12 countries, including India.

With the unexpected event, the embattled flag carrier is, again, losing opportunities to its rivals. Consequently, passengers have a hard time booking their tickets and flight inquiries and modifying their flight schedules.

As a result, many of the airline's international passengers were unable to access its call center while its counters at airports were in total chaos.

A senior pilot from Air India, requesting not to be identified, was quoted as saying that the resulting problem was caused by incompetent management. The lack of back-up plan, should a problem like this happens, has taken its toll on passengers. The carrier, as usual, has enraged its passengers again for the nth time.

According to India's Civil Aviation Minister, Ajit Singh, Sutherland Global Services failed to inform him that it was not yet functional when they took over the operations from IGT.

A visibly irate Minister said that the airline management should have prepared a back-up plan with the existing service provider until the new company is ready to take over its operations. He disclosed that three to four companies showed interests in handling the call center operations for Air India last year upon the termination of its contract with IGE. Obviously, there seemed to be a problem picking the right service provider.

The contract entered into with IGE was terminated on 3 July 2012 by Air India after the Aviation Minister ordered an inquiry on IGE operations in handling the airline's call center.

He was suspicious of the IGE running Air India's call center as the former also controls the company who operates a rival airline. The call center, he pointed out, has access to the flag carrier's database containing vital information valuable to rival airlines.

His suspension grew when he noticed that IndiGo keeps its market share growing while Air India is shrinking. While the former was amassing revenues, the latter was losing both passengers and revenues.

Despite the termination of its contract with the airline, IGE continued its service up to January 31, 2013. The reason? Air India was unable to find a better replacement.

By: Pete Lee.