American Airlines is laying off 656 contact center staff to "elevate" its customer support.
While this may seem like an oxymoron, the airline plans to consolidate its contact center team into a single unit.
That team will handle the high-stake service customer conversations while it will outsource lower-value interactions.
In addition, the airline has pledged to expand its effort to combat customer pain points and focus on first contact resolution (FCR) to drive down contact volumes further.
Indeed, the airline believes that improvements in its first-contact resolution rates may decrease call volumes by as much as 20 percent.
The 656 workers represent 8.2 percent of its 8,000 staff working within the airline’s customer service division, none of whom are represented by a union, according to Bloomberg.
The airline shared the news with KXAS-TV: "Today, we announced updates to our contact centre organisation that will help us better serve our customers.
As part of these updates, we are creating a new Customer Success team that will be dedicated to providing more convenient, elevated support to American Airlines customers with some of their most complex travel needs.
Carolyne Truelove, American Airlines Vice President of Reservations and Service Recovery, reiterated this decision to drive customer service performance to Dallas News.
"We are laser-focused on improving your customer experience. With that focus is digging deep into where we have customer pain points," she said
The airline staff that are being made redundant will continue to work for the company until March 30th.