Apple Airpod Pro - Connection issues

I have had the Airpod Pro for close to a year now. In the past three months I've had on-going connection issues and now its borderline unusable. When I place the AirPods in my ear, it connects to my iPhone 11 Pro (iso 14.2) and then reverts back to the iPhone speaker. When I try to force it to connect to my AirPods via the speaker list, it connects and then reverts back to the iPhone speaker again. I then place them back into the Airpod case and go through the whole process again. After 3-5 goes it will eventually work. And anyone who has the AirPods (either the standard unit or pro) that I know has the same connection issues.

Doing a search online reveals that this is a major issue with the Apple AirPods.

Does anyone have the same issues. Any workarounds or suggestions?