Over the past week, several posts online have surfaced discussing how Hyatt is outsourcing most of its call agents. View From the Wing flagged this Reddit post a couple of days ago that talked about exactly that.
To put it simply, Hyatt laid off the majority (about 300) of its US-based call agents who provide customer service and assistance. The bulk of these offshore agents are now reportedly based in El Salvador and the Philippines. This appears to have been a goal for Hyatt to get rid of their US-based agents in recent months, as the bulk of the company’s agents were based in the US as recently as last year.
Note that the My Hyatt Concierge team is mostly still around. Still though, I see from that post that only 35 US-based agents remain.
I try to avoid situations where I have to call Hyatt, and I only dial them when I absolutely have to. To Hyatt’s credit, they’ve done a good job in terms of functionality with their app and website. Customer service via the phone has been subpar for a while, and I don’t think this move will change much with the quality of service that we receive. This does raise questions about the future of My Hyatt Concierge, as there will eventually be nobody for Hyatt to promote to the team since they’ve laid off almost everyone.
All of that said, it’s disappointing to read some of these firsthand stories on Reddit in response to these posts.
Here’s a former employee:
I used to work for Hyatt – I was a Care agent. When I first came to the company – it was an incredible place to work – they truly cared about their employees – in a span of 5-7 years the culture has changed. Everyone employee is just a number – no one matters. It sucks. So happy I got away. Blessing in disguise for sure.
This user below was personally affected by the recent layoffs:
This was the 3rd lay off in the past year and this time it finally got me. I can say after my 20 years with Hyatt, that this is not the same company that used to value guests and employees. When they hired this offshore team a few months ago to help when we weren’t busy enough to justify it, I had a feeling we were training replacements.
They did keep some US agents on phones and chat, but only a few. When I was on chat I can’t tell you how many complaints I got from guests about these new agents. Hyatt made a big mistake here and customer service is going to suffer big time.
As I said, you can now do most things online either on the app or website, which can handle most essential functionalities. Unless there’s a reservation hiccup or some other emergency, there really isn’t any need to call Hyatt. Agents going offshore doesn’t help the quality of service though, and this move will no doubt compound on the frustration that many guests have with customer service over the phone.
All photos taken by the author.
