Hi jim . Some very good points there. There certainly is discretion but it very much depends on the situation. I was meaning that from the policy i have to work within in a call centre there isnt the discretion to transfer taxes and fees to another booking as you suggested or other options. Ive never saw a manager do this and honestly if someone calls up and they have noshowed and (unless they have a flexible ticket) its more or less clear cut that they lose the return. BA have got tighter and more limited policy for call centres. Its not to do with the fact that we are remote or dont care. Its that in that situation we would advise that passenger would get refund of taxes and buy an entirely new ticket. And thats because we arent as a call centre given discretion over that issue and that includes a manager. In other situations for example as illness or deaths BA do have good policies to help passengers and they are applied regularly by call centre agents.
As for targets it depends on department. Customer relations are targeted on number of cases closed and sales are extremely pressured to make sales.i
However customer supports current target is just to have an average time between calls of less than 80 seconds. This has therefore no bearing on how long or how an agent should deal with a call. Customer support would deal with changing a current booking and are more than likely the department who should have advised that the return was lost.
Therefore i think its been an individual agent who made the error or wasnt thorough or clear enough in what they advised.
It is possible that they only spoke to a sales agent though who simply may have been too focused on getting a new sale to advise about the other booking. I personally have saw situations where sales agents did not read flts back made obvious mistakes and told lies or made information up just to get a sale and this is a problem. Ive also of course spoke to sales agents who had great customer service and cared a lot about information they gave.
Regardless in this case it was poor service and id like to think majority of agents arent like that. As mentioned before its pretty clear cut that noshows cancel the return and its something i have told passengers many times. This is why im so surprised the agent didnt just advise it was lost and to claim for the taxes. I think in this case then it has been an individual agent rather than BA policy that unfortunately caused the problem. I dont believe its BA culture. In most cases i believe that agents do their best and yes we do go above and beyond to help. Just we are limited by BA policy.
Further to that definetly absolutely agree airport has more discretion and its because BA give them more policies and more discretion. I assume because they are more aware of the situation on the ground so to speak.
I wasnt suggesting you sholdnt criticise staff because by all means we make mistakes. As ive said several times ive seen the mistakes and had to fix them too. However i was just saying not to blame us where its BA policy that limits us rather than our own attitude or customer sevice.
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