If you notice a difference in the quality of customer service at Hyatt, particularly via phone and the chat feature, there’s probably a reason for that…
In this post:
Hyatt lays off most call center agents in United States
View from the Wing flags a Reddit post about how Hyatt has reportedly laid off a vast majority of its US-based customer service employees, including those who provide phone support.
While Hyatt has long had regional call centers around the globe, until last year, the company had a lot of phone support agents based in the United States. However, there has been a project in recent months to change that, and it’s reportedly now almost complete.
Over the past eight or so months, a vast majority of US-based agents have been laid off, and have been replaced by new call centers in El Salvador and the Philippines. As I understand it, there are still some managers based in the US, and the My Hyatt Concierge employees are also largely based in the United States.
However, other than that, it seems that most employees are now based abroad. Apparently the negative changes have been in the works for years. At the beginning of the pandemic, Hyatt closed its major physical call centers in the United States, instead moving people to home offices. Now all those jobs are being outsourced.
In terms of quality, there’s nothing inherently bad about outsourced call centers. The issue is that all too often, the goal isn’t just to save money with lower ongoing salaries, but companies also try to save money with training. There’s often such a knowledge gap between tenured US phone agents and outsourced ones, and this will no doubt lead to customer frustration.
So if you notice a lower level of service at Hyatt’s call centers, now you know why…
It’s sad to read what people say about working at Hyatt
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that people who were recently laid off by a company might not have a very favorable impression of it. However, it’s discouraging to read the experiences that US call center agents had with Hyatt in recent years, and how they claim the experience of working there went downhill over time.
Like this comment:
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.
Or this comment:
Let’s not forget they’re making people sign NDAs if they take the severance packages in the amount of $800 or less. Hyatt says Care but they don’t Care about employees. I always say, happy employees=better service=happy guests. They played us like a fiddle
Or this comment:
It’s incredibly annoying to be constantly told how much Hyatt Cares then to be faced with this. At the summit meetings a few months ago we were assured our positions were safe, and that we would be working with the foreign call centers. They would work the hours that we were closed.
However in checking my emails on the way out I noticed that we received one where Teleperformance was noted, and that they planned to open up a team in El Salvador on November 18th. Seems like that all worked out fine for them, and they sent out the emails meeting invites by the end of the day to fire us.
So during my shift I get a notice that I have an important meeting scheduled the next day (my day off) at 9:00 am and not to share this info. (It was at this point the panic set in) …
The meeting to lay us off was so unprofessional. People couldn’t get in, or they were unaware they had been scheduled. I had one person resort to calling me on teams to find out what was going on, and frankly she deserved to hear that from her employer not a coworker. It was just them blandly telling us “how hard this is for them” and that we no longer have jobs. I’m sorry but the alligator tears are just too much.
I don’t know about y’all, but every day I had at least one person tell me how thankful they were that English was my first language, or that I wasn’t AI when calling in, usually with less kind words but you get the drift. I can see how moving the call centers is in the best interest of the shareholders, but it’s definitely not in the best interest of the guests.
I’m upset because I feel like I was misled about the security of my job. My fears had directly been addressed at an in person summit and I was told not to worry. I received a promotion and consistently had fantastic scores on my calls. My feedback from guests included compliments such as “her kindness almost made me cry” and I thought I was doing this for a company who would at least care enough about me to fire me in a compassionate way, instead of a bungled teams meeting.
Hyatt has long differentiated itself with trying to treat people better and offering a higher level of customer service, so it’s unfortunate to see that at least in some areas, that commitment isn’t there anymore.
Bottom line
In recent months, Hyatt has reportedly laid off hundreds of customer service staff based in the United States, including call center and chat agents. At this point, there’s just a small number of US-based agents left, in addition to managers and My Hyatt Concierge staff.
Instead, Hyatt is increasingly moving its call centers to El Salvador and the Philippines, which I can’t imagine will lead to a great level of service.
What do you make of Hyatt outsourcing its US-based support?
When Hyatt moved their customer service agents from call centers to their homes after the pandemic service downgraded significantly. The audio quality of the phone calls was horrible plus you heard dogs barking and babies crying in the background. I see this return to call centers as an actual improvement.
I often hear chickens in the background when speaking with Amazon CSRs. I wouldn't draw too many assumptions that it will be "in facility."
Hyatt’s US agents were stunningly, stunningly, stunningly awful. Hanging up on phone calls, refusing to greet people calling, insulting their guests, and pretending to be managers. I’m sorry these people lost their jobs, hopefully they find ones they’re better suited to in the future.
Perhaps some new tariffs on phone calls would solve this...
I am extremely disappointed with all those outsourced call centers, the level of understanding and the impossibility of help in most difficult situations make those call centers a source of disappointment and frustration with a typical phrase " I am sorry to hear that". Marriott...Hilton... Air France...British Airways... KLM... and many more have those call centers that at the end can't help you on difficult situations Because they do. It have autonomy to make most...
I am extremely disappointed with all those outsourced call centers, the level of understanding and the impossibility of help in most difficult situations make those call centers a source of disappointment and frustration with a typical phrase " I am sorry to hear that". Marriott...Hilton... Air France...British Airways... KLM... and many more have those call centers that at the end can't help you on difficult situations Because they do. It have autonomy to make most decisions and guided by books, not by customer service
Employees always complain, who cares. Especially low level employees. Outsourced employees have less complaints as they are actually thankful and appreciative to have a job. Rather than here in the US it's complaints about pay, managers, benefits and "work/life balanace".
What an alarmingly terrible take.
Because US employees don't want to be exploited and have slave labor wages, they all deserve to have their jobs outsourced?
The employees are what make a company. The company is the one that should be thankful and appreciate them.
To be fair, customer service from a call center in the Philippines is often better than the United States and certainly better than a Spanish-speaking country. The Philippines has one of the highest, if not the highest, English fluency rates in the world. Plus, the people are polite and there’s a genuine service culture. Your average Filipino probably speaks better English than your average American, who has a seventh or eighth grade reading level.
And those off shore positions will be replaced increasingly by AI. It is simply the way things are.
@lucky just talked about Marriott moving room assignments to AI. While on one hand that might free up front agent's time, it likely means hotels need less of them.
Great way to treat your employees, JB Pritzker and family.
Hyatt globalist here. I haven’t heard from my Hyatt globalist concierge in more than a year.
And, when was the last time a Marriott Ambassador heard from their ONSHORE ambassador? I had been Ambassador for years and can only characterize my ambassador as MIA.
I receive a same-day response from my Marriott ambassador and I hear from her a few times a year when she reaches out to see if I have special stays coming up, etc.
Are you stupid? The Pritzker family had nothing to do with this decision. Go cry to Mark Vondrasek Magat
To lower employment costs and lower taxes, perhaps the federal government could offshore some of its positions.
@Tom,
Agreed. Let's start with the current administration, shall we.
At least they have not been outsourced to India.
@Justin
We partially outsourced a president before.
He was based in Indonesia for a few years.
“In terms of quality, there’s nothing inherently bad about outsourced call centers.”
Yes, there is. There’s a LOT bad about them.
Nothing inherently bad, except for the inability to understand what they are saying; getting hanged up on when they know they cannot assist; when the follow up question is not on the script.
I think I've called Hyatt maybe twice over the years. Have used the chat feature a lot, but probably equally or more so have DM'd Hyatt on X (only reason I still have X, actually, for reaching customer service at various companies). Wondering what, if anything, will happen to the team on that channel because it's always been prompt and efficient to get stuff done that way.
This.. twitter has been so useful to contact Hyatt for odds and ends things I hope (probably in vain) nothing changes.
Hey, well what do you want? Booking hotel rooms is something that's pretty straightforward, unless you have some kind of very special or valuable property that requires customized selling skills. All the info and steps can basically be self-serve.
Americans have a high standard of living and are very expensive to employ. This is what companies are incentivized to do. I guess people in lower cost countries are the beneficiaries of new jobs.
If...
Hey, well what do you want? Booking hotel rooms is something that's pretty straightforward, unless you have some kind of very special or valuable property that requires customized selling skills. All the info and steps can basically be self-serve.
Americans have a high standard of living and are very expensive to employ. This is what companies are incentivized to do. I guess people in lower cost countries are the beneficiaries of new jobs.
If anyone has a way for this to not happen, please speak up.
There are always unions and union contracts.
My Concierge had pretty outstanding performance and I had great experience with them. But for the phone service, I actually had very opposite experience, and US based employees are just rude and incompetent, I wonder how is that happening (maybe ones with longer tenure became “concierge”?) Whenever I got something urgent, I chose Chinese and those people are just way more helpful.
Same to AA too. I had multiple times that I need to...
My Concierge had pretty outstanding performance and I had great experience with them. But for the phone service, I actually had very opposite experience, and US based employees are just rude and incompetent, I wonder how is that happening (maybe ones with longer tenure became “concierge”?) Whenever I got something urgent, I chose Chinese and those people are just way more helpful.
Same to AA too. I had multiple times that I need to change my award reservation (adding a leg/removing a leg) without touching my transatlantic/pacific leg. I HUCA at least 10+ times, and all those customer service just kept saying “according to the rule, this is not possible”, “you need to cancel the ticket first”, “no you don’t know what you’re doing” etc. etc. (well, excuse me, how did the representative do it then last week?)
It was until once I accidentally dialed the Chinese line because I was out of states that took me 3 mins and got everything done. So far 3 out of 3 it worked like a breeze.
I feel like COVID is the tipping point, my previous experience with HYATT and AA since I joined the hotel/airline world in 2013 was pretty good. It’s just so sad to see US service deteriorated so much and became so uncompetitive.
Hi Ben, I don’t think you’ve ever stayed at a Disney Resort or called the Disney reservations/ assistance line, but they are really the best in the industry and it really shows why knowledgeable US based agents are worth it (sad that Hyatt is unable to see that). In the end I casually dropped 6k for a Disney stay + tickets on the phone just because the interaction was so positive and all questions were answered.
Just had a call last week with a rep that seemed to be based in the Philippines, who did not understand how Suite Upgrade Award works. I thought it might be due to the late hours in the U.S., but that unfortunately would be the norm. Instead, I sent an email for the Concierge team to confirm the suite upgrade.