Speaking to Arab News, Jan disclosed the airline’s plan to launch a major media campaign to encourage people to use the airline’s website for various services such as booking reservations, purchases, selecting seats and getting boarding passes. “At present only three percent of sales are done through the website,” he said.

He said upgrading the call center would take place on Aug. 25, increasing its capacity from 60,000 to 200,000 calls per day. “This will solve most of the problems as people have been complaining that the lines at the center are always busy,” he said, adding that the center receives about a million calls a day.

“We expect that 25 percent of sales would take place through the website by the year 2013,” he said, adding that the increase in website use would also reduce pressure on the call center. He said most calls received by the center were unrelated to bookings or cancellations.

“Our website is much developed now and you can do your booking, get your ticket and your boarding pass within five minutes, especially for domestic flights,” Jan said. People can also check seat availability through the website. “They need not call us if there are no seats available on the website.” By the end of May, 1.89 million reservations were made through the website.

He said the arrival of all newly purchased 70 Airbus and Boeing planes would improve the airline’s position to accommodate more passengers and increase flights. “We have held several meetings with our Director General Khaled Al-Molhem to develop the call center. We have decided to diversify services to meet the demands of various clients,” he pointed out.

He said call center staff have been instructed to provide utmost care and attention to customers. “We assess their performance through an automatic system. We also have supervisors for each group of 15 employees to check their performance and provide necessary assistance.” Employees are given training in the art of dealing with people.

Speaking about some of the problems faced by Saudi Airlines, Jan said people make several bookings at a time and forget to cancel them. Some passengers, especially those holding First and Horizon class tickets, fail to show up or come late. The national carrier suffered a loss of SR1.79 billion in 2008 because of 3.61 million no-show passengers including 2.3 million on domestic flights.

Saudia has five call centers in Jeddah, Riyadh, Dammam, Madinah and Amman with a total of 720 staff. The Amman office takes care of calls from Europe. “In one minute we receive 1,600 calls but we are able to attend to only 300 calls,” Jan said.

During the first six months of 2010, the call centers received more than seven million calls through its joint reservation number 920022222 and attended 5.14 million calls. The Riyadh center received 2.65 million (attended 1.99 million) followed by Jeddah 2.54 million (1.87 million), Dammam 1.19 million (855,639) and Madinah 620,486 calls (427,878).

After the introduction of the Amadeus system, these centers have also started selling tickets. Sales through call centers reached SR29.69 million by the end of July 2010. They have sent 1.7 million SMS messages to passengers to inform confirmation of seats.