BA’s latest Head of Customer Experience resigns – after a year

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• BJ says:

  12 May12 May 06:20

  At least the BA Heads and United Managers have the integrity to resign…

  • Chrisasaurus says:

    12 May12 May 10:17

    +1000

• Steve says:

  12 May12 May 06:36

  Seems like a pointless job. Do a little over year, CV check. No money, nothing to do really. Go somewhere else.

  • Mouse says:

    12 May12 May 07:19

    You just described 90% of office jobs

    • jeff77 says:

      12 May12 May 07:57

      90% of office workers leave after a year?

• Patrick says:

  12 May12 May 06:49

  Laming was responsible for developing the concepts for The Residence, First Apartments and Business Studio during his time at Etihad so this appointment potentially bodes well.

  • BJ says:

    12 May12 May 08:10

    Only if BA provides the investmenf and that’s the problem it seems.

    • Charles Martel says:

      12 May12 May 12:48

      Surely part of being in a leadership position is convincing your peers and masters your plans are worth investing in?

      • SH says:

        12 May12 May 19:14

        Demonstrably The Residence was not worth investing in as they are being ripped out…

• JDB says:

  12 May12 May 07:42

  BA has also just appointed a new head of IT Dirk John, ex McKinsey, Latam and Lufthansa and they are splitting the role of COO with a joint hire who will be responsible for day to day operations to be announced shortly. The incumbent, Jason Mahoney, is becoming chief technical officer.

• AJA says:

  12 May12 May 07:49

  Good luck to Calum Laming. I hope he has a decent budget and has influence on how that money is spent.

  I’d prioritise improving the lounges by getting some decent magazines and newspapers back and improving the food offering both in lounges and on-board.

  I suspect however it will be a case of emulating the great BBC series W1A with the wonderful Anna Rampton as Head of Better who said: ‘The fact is, this is about establishing what we do most of best and finding fewer ways of doing more of it less.’

  “If ever there was an opportunity for BA to stand tall and make a big, bold statement about how much it values the idea of valuing values, then surely this is it.” (to quote Ian Fletcher)

  Let’s hope we don’t get a repeat of David Tennant saying “If it hasn’t exactly been a good day for producer Lucy Freeman, for Ian it’s been worse than good and it’s about to get worse than bad.”

  Meanwhile they need to sort out the scheduling and stop the last minute cancellations and consolidating 5 flights into one departing at silly o’clock in the morning.

  • jeff77 says:

    12 May12 May 08:16

    “Meanwhile they need to sort out the scheduling and stop the last minute cancellations and consolidating 5 flights into one departing at silly o’clock in the morning.”

    Won’t happen any time soon, unless they manager to find 6000 staff overnight

    • AJA says:

      12 May12 May 08:39

      Well obviously, but in the meantime perhaps BA might consider reducing the flight schedule and instead sell tickets for flights they will realistically fly.

      I think from a customer perspective we would prefer to know up front that there will only be two flights a day and plan accordingly rather than give us the option of choosing a midafternoon or early evening flight which are both cancelled 10 days before and then try to blame those cancellations on the extraordinary circumstance of Covid thereby wriggling out of UK261 liabilities.

      • john says:

        12 May12 May 12:02

        Perhaps the plan is sell more flights than you can fly then cancel those that will generate the least profit based on loadings closer to departure. That way it’s less of a guessing game over what to ditch.

        I guess there is also the covid uncertainty that perhaps they are forced to reduce flights to some destinations because of that (e.g. Shanghai lockdown) but introducing flights late in the day on some routes won’t be cost effective.

        • Dubious says:

          12 May12 May 14:34

          There could be some truth in that but perhaps more about knowing passenger demand than the £.
          Have a look at page 17 in the report on this site: https://asi.sutd.edu.sg/white-papers/asi-white-paper-slots/

          It gives a good summary of some of key operational challenges airlines faced albeit during the height of COVID-19.

          There are also other factors like keeping an eye on the rest of the schedule to ensure they keep their slot rights in fact.

        • AJA says:

          12 May12 May 16:03

          “Perhaps the plan is sell more flights than you can fly then cancel those that will generate the least profit based on loadings closer to departure. That way it’s less of a guessing game over what to ditch.”

          Undoubtedly BA do that – it gets customers buying tickets for a flight that they want to take at a time that suits them. If they just removed the flight from sale chances are we would investigate the flight schedule of the competition and if they have a flight at a time that suits and BA doesn’t then the competition gets the cash.

          As it is BA gets the cash from the customer then close to the date arbitrarily cancels it and suggests a flight at silly o’clock in the morning or a refund. Then they try and wriggle out of any compensation by blaming Covid rather than admitting it is a commercial decision to consolidate flights.

          The thing is doing this on a long term basis is damaging to the brand and definitely doesn’t bode well for customer experience scores. But given the replies by Rob saying that Calum won’t be given the cash it really is a case of doing an Anna Rampton and finding ways of doing less more. Not good at all. Depressing in fact.

  • BJ says:

    12 May12 May 08:23

    It’s 2022, paper magazines and newspapers shouldn’t be a thing any more. They can sort out the lounges simply by reducing right to use them, and divert the cash from savings on volume of food and bev to quality. Agree they need to get cancellations sorted fast. The phone lines also.

    • Rob says:

      12 May12 May 09:09

      You think BA actually pays for the magazines in the lounges? Business Traveller is, so I was told, the only one they ever paid for. The rest are free or the publishers pay BA. It’s a profit centre not a cost centre.

      • BJ says:

        12 May12 May 09:55

        No, I didn’t. My point was that in this day and age with so many electronic devices around there is little need for mass circulation daily and weekly paper. I know there is a certain joy to the paper editions but we be to get away from them.

    • RussellH says:

      12 May12 May 10:39

      One of the few bits of flying that I actually enjoyed (have not been on a plane since June 2019) was the ability to pick up a load of newspapers just before boarding.
      I do not want to have to rely on electricity for something to read!

      Flying on LH I could usually rely on getting an FT International and a Süddeutsche Zeitung as well as a couple of reasonably intelligent UK papers.

• Nick says:

  12 May12 May 08:14

  A little bit unfair. I know Tom, he’s wanted to work overseas for a long time, and held out in the hope BA would post him -but they do that so rarely nowadays he’s realised it’s not going to happen. Obviously the job is part of the equation, but at the end of the day he’s done the classic ‘post-covid self evaluation’ and put his life goals first. The world would be a happier place if more people did that.

  Just hope the new guy brings less of VY than their previous major export did.

  • Rhys says:

    12 May12 May 09:08

    But that’s the problem, right? If BA had the budget to spend on CX then maybe Tom would’ve stuck around because it would’ve been fun and he had something exciting to do.

    • Callum says:

      13 May13 May 12:42

      No… If you truly want to live abroad, being given “something fun to do” doesn’t stop you from wanting to live abroad.

      I can’t even imagine what I’d need to be offered to live in the UK again (other that the obvious “here’s a billion pounds” etc!).

      • Rob says:

        13 May13 May 13:45

        Probably free medical care in your old age plus a pension which is still increased by RPI instead of being frozen …

        • Callum says:

          13 May13 May 20:52

          No. I must say that seems like a very ignorant view of the world you have there, the UK isn’t unique in providing free healthcare and decent(ish) pensions…

        • Rob says:

          14 May14 May 10:02

          I meant your UK pension you are due would stop increasing if you were outside the UK.

• Alex says:

  12 May12 May 08:32

  Customer service at pre & post flight is woeful and doesn’t necessarily reflect the service in the air. But it does major damage to the brand.

  A few years I contacted them as i was concerned that BA prints boarding passes without a space between first name & surname. The name on the pass therefore did not ‘exactly match the name on the passport’.

  To most people this might not sound a problem but whilst I love travel I’m a nervous flyer. As long as I’ve planned properly I’ll be fine but this kept bothering me. I phoned the customer service centre, all they kept telling me was ‘If the name on the boarding pass doesn’t exactly match the name on the passport you’ll need to pay to get it changed’.

  I wrote to the various senior figures in BA never receiving a response of anyone. It was only by websites such as this that I got that answer that BA boarding cards look like that and not to worry.

  I continued to write to BA afterwards to see if I’d ever get a response. After 10 letters I gave up.

  The point of this post… doing the big stuff is great but these people rarely want to deal with the small stuff that damage the brand.

  How many of us have had a negative view of an airline because of something small but the 4 hour delay didn’t really bother us.

  Ultimately BA doesn’t know what it is. It’s trying to have the class of Emirates with the quirkiness of Virgin but pleasing the easyJet market.

  • Andrew. says:

    12 May12 May 09:22

    There are no prefix or suffix spaces to either your first name or surname in your passport either. It’s tabulated text.

    The boarding cards, are also just tabulated text. I’m not entirely sure why anyone would waste so much of their own time or a business’s time complaining about a redundant character in tabulation. But then many years ago I had a 6 month complaint about the use of a dash rather than a hyphen in the presentation of an individuals name on a credit card. The only thing that resolved it was when I organised a day trip to the card embossing area of the bank and evidenced that there was only 26 letters, 10 numbers a dash and a “V” or “MC” symbol on the imprinter daisy wheels.

    • Alex says:

      13 May13 May 23:43

      Thanks for you really nasty bitter comments.

  • Economist Nearby says:

    12 May12 May 11:05

    Durr-head

  • john says:

    12 May12 May 12:08

    I can report that it is fixed however. My boarding pass from last week has.. “SURNAME / FIRSTNAME PREFIX”

    Although I guess the issue you would have now is that your passport doesn’t have a / in your name 🙂

• John T says:

  12 May12 May 08:32

  The thing is BA don’t really need to be the best. They operate more flights to and from one of the most popular business and tourist destination cities in the world than any other airline.
  Thats why people fly them not because they have an amazing customer experience.
  If I was an IAG shareholder I don’t think I would support spending more of this either.

  • AJA says:

    12 May12 May 08:47

    You forgot to add – in the UK.

    I think Turkish Airlines would like a word re the same claim from Istanbul and American Airlines might claim the same re New York while Emirates might claim the same re Dubai.

    But I agree let’s hope BA concentrates on only being competent for now. Why aim for the skies when you can’t even get there? 😉

  • Rob says:

    12 May12 May 09:07

    That’s why you’re not running a big business. When you stand still you become complacent and fat, and others overtake you. One day you wake up and you don’t have a business left, because you’ve managed to alienate every customer group.

    • dougzz99 says:

      12 May12 May 09:25

      How far on the rear view mirror are BA right now.

    • Chrisasaurus says:

      12 May12 May 15:25

      Well, not really true when the barrier to entry into a market is insane.

      Who is able to compete with BAs position, in particular its massive share of slots at airports?

  • Doc says:

    12 May12 May 10:46

    This is one of the reasons they so oppose the additional runway at LHR- perfect competition would kill them.

    • SH says:

      12 May12 May 19:58

      But they don’t oppose it:
      https://www.britishairways.com/runways/speech01.html

  • Economist Nearby says:

    12 May12 May 11:05

    If you were an IAG shareholder your shares would have fallen in value from a high of 480p to 121p today, so you might think investment in its website, app and customer experience, so that customers can and want to book flights, is quite important.

    • Colin MacKinnon says:

      12 May12 May 15:15

      Actually, have they not fallen further – was the 480p not a pre-rights issue price?

      So your share of the company (and future profits) on a 121p share is less than your share of the company (and profits) was at 480p!

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