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BA comes in for a fair bit of criticism (not least from InsideFlyer readers and contributors!), and much of it is justified in my view. Regular Avios devaluations, outdated premium products and cost cutting measures have all taken their toll over the last few years. Where British Airways really ‘excels’ though is in creating PR mountains out of customer service molehills – if I could choose one area where management should really focus some attention on, it would be service recovery and the PR implications of not doing it right.
In a large global business, things are going to go wrong somewhere in the organisation every day. Most customers understand that sometimes they might get caught up in those issues – it’s a fact of life. Businesses then have a choice though: whether to do what they can to salvage the situation as much as possible; or to not put any significant effort and expense into trying to help customers feel better about the situation.
BA has an unfortunate habit of doing the bare minimum (if that) when passengers are inconvenienced and hoping nobody notices. In the age of social media and camera phones, that policy leads to predictable consequences for the brand’s reputation.
The latest BA service recovery/PR mess is about a loud recurring buzzing noise on a 10 hour flight from London to Las Vegas:
@British_Airways after a flight from Heathrow to Vegas listening a noise for the whole journey 1 of my friends has bn given £20 voucher pic.twitter.com/LqQqwiiUI5
— Shona Lightbody (@Shona2607) November 15, 2017
Pretty annoying, I think we can all agree – but nothing a free future flight or a decent refund for the worst affected passengers wouldn’t have solved, particularly if it was proactively offered. Instead, BA decides to wait for passengers to complain, doesn’t respond for a week, and then offers a £20 discount off a future flight.
I sometimes wonder if there might be a bunch of moles from competitor airlines in charge of this stuff at BA – from a PR perspective they would genuinely have been better off just completely ignoring the complaint rather than offering something as stupid as a £20 voucher. ‘£20 compensation for 10 hour flight from hell‘ is a headline the tabloids are very predictably going to find utterly irresistible – it’s also the sort of detail that sticks in people’s minds and that they might mention to their friends and colleagues. In other words, a classic PR mess.
When you consider how much money airlines spend on marketing and ‘brand management’, I find it astonishing that they don’t see how spending a few grand on good service recovery in order to stop stories like this would also be money well spent. That’s without even getting onto the subject of treating customers right when things go wrong, simply because it’s the right thing to do…
Bottom line
Well done BA – another day, another own goal.
What’s your favourite travel company PR blunder? – don’t feel you have to limit it to BA, there are plenty of other culprits!
Hat-tip: VFTW
Maybe there should be a set of awards for the worst overall airline, sure BA would make top 3 these days!
We might run something along those lines over Christmas/NY I think. The IF response to the rather weird Business Traveller Award results. 🙂
LOL. I think I deleted that draft as I was thinking it was a bit too much…
Haha, oh no! – it’s fine, I suggest we have a bloggers festive conference call (with mandatory brandy / champagne and optional mince pies) at some point to decide some categories. The best I’ve come up with so far is ‘Best Dressed Airline Exec’ – I think you can prob guess who my choice would be… let’s just say he certainly stands out in a call centre 🙂
Another BA shocker – handing out BA branded MasterCards as compensation for an involuntary downgrade, and then refusing to replace the cards when they don’t work… (has happened to me…)
Haha, I say it isn’t always BA… but it sometimes feels like it is!
The problem with airlines is that they don’t realise the following holds true for those of us that don’t fly for work regularly or don’t live within the heathrow catchment area
1. We choose an airlines which goes from where we are to where we want to go with the minimum of effort – in most cases that limits the choice to a single option
2. If we have a choice then it’s based on PR/Service/Price depending on personal circumstances.
3. If any of those choices include transferring via Heathrow using BA or using Ryannair, the other airline will win every time.
I recently travelled business class return from LGW to Oakland, at a cost of £6k (okay my work were paying). There was no enyertainment system or working power sockets. Got 10k avios as an ‘apology’ but BA are missing the point – will look to utilise my air miles or fly or any other alliance airline in the future – such a poor offering
Exactly. Once you start getting into Points/Miles it’s easy to forget sometimes just how expensive some of these tickets can be. I’d be pretty disgruntled if I’d ‘just’ spent the Avios and the surcharges – for £6k I’d expect a lot better than that.
Hopefully you chose to earn Alaska miles for your BA flight instead of Avios, Ian. After a couple of long Business Class flights paid by somebody else, I’m sure that a Cathay Pacific First Class reward would put a smile back on your face.
I have nothing but praise for BA customer services! On the two occasions that I have contacted them they have addressed my problems in a positive manner, above and beyond the response that I expected. Therefore, although I’ll not argue with other people’s comments, I’ll give them 5 stars for their excellent customer relations.
Always good to get a balanced view,
Alex CruzGeoffrey 🙂I have no connection or association with BA or Alex Cruz other than as a passenger.
I can only comment on my experiences and I have no axe to grind.
Delighted to hear it Geoffrey! – I’m sure they get quite a lot right quite a lot of the time if I’m being fair. Unfortunately, my personal experience has been (almost invariably) poor when it comes to the customer relations department. The flipside of that is that I’ve almost always had good crews on BA
Mr. Deeney,
It seems, judging by the ironic remarks made by Miles Hunt, that only criticism of BA (and presumably of all other airlines) should be published in your column. If this is so then please cancel my membership since I do would rather read a balanced range of opinions – good as ewll as bad.
Dear Geoffrey,
First of all, please accept my apologies for the offence caused by Miles’ reply. I understand it was meant as a light-hearted friendly joke, but these things (clearly) do not always come across well online.
On the broader point, please be assured that all opinions (good, bad or indifferent on any related subject) are extremely welcome here at InsideFlyer – not just in the comments, but on the blog and the forums too. I think one of the great strengths of InsideFlyer is precisely the variety of opinion and views that having a range of different contributors allows. If everyone was always singing from the same sheet, the world (and InsideFlyer) would be a rather dull place in my opinion.
As Editor, I never censor blog posts contributed by our writers due to their content (so long as it is factual / non libellous), and in the comments and the forums I have a very deliberate policy of not removing anything (regardless of how critical it may be), so long as it doesn’t potentially contravene the law. I’m pleased to say that so far I have only ever had to remove one comment (apart from obvious spam and a couple of comments where the author requested that they be removed).
On a final, personal, note – I’d just like to say thank you for reading and for sharing your own experience. I really hope you continue to do so, as sharing thoughts, ideas and tips is really what InsideFlyer is all about and I would genuinely hate for anyone to feel unwelcome here.
All the very best,
Joe
My pathetic attempt at humour has turned a minor comment into PR disaster (again…) 🙂
good one!
My wife recently fainted and fell head first down our stairs a few hours before we were meant to leave to Budapest. A fraught morning followed , paramdeics called etc etc. This was an Amex redemption flight. On ringing BA customer services the first two agents I spoke to both said unless you take the flight you are booked on today you will loose it. No other options or explanations. Only on not accepting this and ringing a third time we were told there was a medical policy and something could be done.
We jumped through the hoops presented to us and made the flight the next day. On returning I complain about the total lack of service and empathy we received from so called customer service, questioning wether the people involved should even be working in such a department. I received a standard reply saying they will speak to the people involved. Utter rubbish
IN 2017 BA are a poor shadow of what they used to be… If you want value or service, book elsewhere and #flyABBA Sadly it really is as simple as that. They do sometimes deliver but it is incredibly inconsistent and in my experience you can’t even rely on the basics of food and working IFE even on an 11hr longhaul. When combined with a derisory attitude to service recovery, the answer is surely to book elsewhere until they revert to some semblance of service.