paul4040

Bad news for everyone except short-term shareholders, and possibly Capita.

mikebg

It isn't. If it were it would be looking at the long term prospects of the company generating more wealth. Don't confure short-termism with capitalism. Warren Buffett is as big a capitalist as you can get, but his company horizons lie way into the future.

skipness1E

BA's has had cost cutting from Wille Walsh and now Alex Cruz installing this in the company DNA. There's nothing wrong with that as such, BUT, in the current BA environment, it means managers take their lead from the top and cut after cut after cut is implemented to please the current "leadership" team with almost no view of brand value or indeed medium term planning. There's not much left to cut.

In the job market, BA is no longer somewhere that informed people really want to work, and that's a huge change. It used to be an employer that good talent aspired to, not anymore.

Cymro

Firstly, you could do better with a call answering SLA, and better management and prediction of demand to ensure that calls are answered within that SLA. This might not result in a cost saving but in enhanced business benefit.

Secondly, you may be able to improve some of the training so that you could have clearer workflows, e.g., by ensuring that all agents have access to avios and holidays bookings.

With better training and knowledge, you have fewer escalations and more time spent helping people.

After a bedding-in period, you could simplify the phone tree (and direct customers to the right team, and bringing up full booking info as soon as the agent takes over the call) as well as improving the quality of training and skill levels so that individual agents are more empowered (if the client spec allows this).

Ultimately a full-scale outsource could look at tooling, so that you have clearer fare rules, less need to manually issue tickets, etc. *Will* Capita do this? Quite probably, they won't be allowed to. But with the right level of investment, including significant upfront consultancy followed by an intelligent transition over two to five years, Capita could run the call centres more effectively than BA currently is.

It would be even better if they could unify onshore and offshore teams if they are making those improvements.

mmogdan

Why can't BA offer live chat, if logged in via the website?

icegirl

Apparently, it is in the pipeline.

missdimeaner

Very short sighted indeed, my sympathies lie with the staff and customers.
I fear even if existing staff are re-employed they won't have the same leeway to deal with calls. It will be an 'x many calls to be handled in y time' pressuring many of them to look at a career change.
I do not recognise what BA has become- I don't expect it to remain the way it was a few decades ago but it has now been overtaken by AA which is really saying something .

Howard Long

I am sure when you're presenting your Powerpoints this gets nodding heads of approval. In reality, the evidence of every call centre outsource I've ever encountered is completely the opposite.

nallison

Indeed. It's essentially an abuse of capitalism to suit the short term interests of current management, against the long term health of the company. It's so obvious what's going on it's rather shameless really. The IT failure has already wiped out years of savings from BoB and other service reductions, so the strategy can only be called a failure. WW can't even make AC a scapegoat because he is his man and he's absolutely up to his neck in it.

I just feel very sorry for the frontline staff who continually suffer the consequences, while obviously those at the top never feel any pain themselves. I wonder how many of those Argentinian cabin crew AC's salary would pay for? All of them and then some.

I would wonder how these guys can sleep at night with such dreadful treatment of their staff, but I guess sociopaths don't need to worry about that. Sad, but at the end of the day it's just an airline. Ignore the fluff and remember that frequent flyer programmes aren't actually there to reward you, but to trap you, and get on with flying with whoever suits you and treats you best

Calum

How long until 90% of the staff at waterside get sold off to Dnata

our_kid

Well clearly whoever is running the Contact Centres in BA have little idea how to do it.

Bit of automation and self service and you can save any outsource.

That is as far as my free consultancy goes - thoughts with Manchester and Newcastle CC teams.

Yorkshire Traveller

They did have this via Skype about 18 months ago as a trial. I still have them as a Contact in my Skype directory.

Robespierre

First of all to any of the affected staff reading this thread, I am sure, based on my interaction with you over the years, that you will rise above this. You deserve better and your talent/commitment/competence will eventually be recognised by an employer even if it is not by BA.

For BA to outsource a front line function is just incredible. There is a website where, I kid you not, Flight Sim gamers have set up a 'Virtual BA' and play at running a Virtual Airline. Never did I think that it would become reality.

It was always good when you were speaking to people who had actually used the product they were talking about. I will miss that.

Good luck to all those affected and thanks for the excellent service you have provided to me. I hope some of you stick around.

UKtravelbear

@Cymro

Thanks for the laugh!

'Investment' and 'upfront consultancy' are not going to happen.

I really don't see BA paying for any of this and if BA ain't paying then why should capita?

And BA could have done all of these things itself. But it hasn't.

PETER01

4 weeks notice is terrible and sad to hear they are losing their jobs

I do hope they find employment elsewhere. BA just seem to be cutting so much and like others I am away trying other airlines.