You do sound like you want to help, but if you are keen to provide good customer service, you might be better to go and work for a company which shares your values. BA lost its soul when Willie Walsh decided that in order to compete on short haul routes with the likes of Ryanair and Easyjet, they would mimic their very low customer service standards. This strategy is fine, if you also mimic their prices, but unless you are purchasing a ticket at the last minute, your prices are those of a full service airline, sadly, BA no longer offers this unless you are in the front two cabins.
You may be surprised to know that I didn't make up my information regarding perverse incentives within BA. I have received a lot of information over the years from BA employees, some of whom were based in call centres, who agree with me.
The truth is, there is still some discretion... I have heard of cases where BA employees have gone above and beyond for a customer. It tends to be people based at the airport, who can see the distress or anxiety or unfairness... call centre personnel are too remote and too target driven to care. Sadly, even airport personnel are being phased out by BA, where the culture of screen based customer service is now rampent.
The bottom line is this. Ryanair operates a very low cost culture, which is hostile to their passengers. They thrive on taking a combative and aggressive stance with passengers (and their staff) and see any customer problem as a revenue opportunity. I avoid them as much as I can, because I am too old for that nonsense. It is best left to back packers and stag parties as far as I am concerned. It does however have one virtue. It is honest. Michael O'Leary does little to disguise his contempt for his staff or his customers. You know what you get.
BA promotes itself as a full service airline, committed to good service, to providing the passenger with a high standard of comfort. If you are a regular in Club World or First Class I am sure this is your experience.
However, the rest of the poor travelling public, the experience is very different. It is sad to watch the race to the bottom, but the real disconnect is the massive gap between the face they present to the public, the culture of To Fly, To Serve and the reality. They treat customers with contempt. It is simply no use to say, we are only carrying out the policy of the airline.
In the case we are discussing, the call centre staff could have told the customer they were going to cancel the whole ticket, explained that they could get the charges back, etc. They initially implied they had done that, and only after listening to the tape did they admit they had not. This type of response by call centre staff deserves my scathing criticism, it is deceitful and frankly nasty. No-one more senior MADE this CSR do that... it is a sign of a culture that has been created. This customer was distressed and had made a very costly mistake. BA made it worse... it is shameful and if we cannot tell the people who work for the company what we think of it, what is the point of having them?
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