My point of those function is that it wouldn't have made the line inaccessible like it did had they been in place.
There is a finite number of lines, and because a lot of people were holding, the line jammed calls were essentially being rejected. If they had a call-back function, they will have had people off the line quickly enough so that others could get through to register for call-back, which could be prioritised.
I don't think fundamental IT changes would be easily forthcoming, but at least those functions listed above are cheap to implement. Online rebooking tool would be much harder to implement, even though I prefer to have that function, of course.
They tried to make it easier to rebook online if you remember, but when it involves other carriers, it would be much harder to implement, and bluntly put, I don't really think BA's IT would be up to it at this stage, so any improvement would be better than none.
Originally Posted by
BerksFlyer
[left]
Although this would undoubtedly help, BA would still need to employ more people to handle the volume of calls on weeks like this. The agent I spoke to on Friday to get my flight change, who was also outstanding in handling my call, said that they were staying on a few extra hours until midnight. It seems to me that BA hadn’t fully prepared for the strike announcement by having an army of people it could bring in at short notice to cope, probably because that costs money.
I suspect part of the problem is the clunky system that requires more training than if they did not have a clunky IT system. I suspect they can't just click their fingers and pay to make people appear short-term only...
Originally Posted by
Mountlodge
I Just hope those Volunteers will be remunerated appropriately
I believe they were, based on the conversation with agents. They said they were authorised to go into overtime (as in they weren't forced to work overtime - I did ask, and they said they weren't being made to do it). That suggests that they weren't doing it without overtime pay.
Originally Posted by
corporate-wage-slave
As it happens the GGL and YouFirst lines didn't go to a very long wait, and it seems that Golds were getting through reasonably successfully.
50 minutes was the longest I actually held, however, I had a very long period (about 4 hours) when the GGL number was ringing out with no response, and also rejecting after picking up saying 'due to high call volume' in the US line.