I disagree - it doesn’t feel very premium to have to interact with a ‘robot’ - if flying in J or as a status holder then part of the premium service should be that I can call a number & get through to an empowered agent who can help...rather than lots of menus / options. One can talk about the virtues of ‘optimising’, capacity tracking, working smarter not harder all you like but IF you want to deliver good service you have to have happy, empowered, front line staff. It saves so much aggro in the end. If you just want to be good enough then by all means do all of these things but don’t think customers won’t notice and staff won’t turnover when they’re faced with Mrs Irate who doesn’t know her booking reference but knows she’s flying to Munich on a flight in the afternoon next Tuesday.

If LTN Phobia’s suggestion were implemented of course, the customer’s EC profile could be pulled up based on their phone number & it would just be a case of clearing them through data protection to see Mrs Irate is booked on BA954.