Innocent Abroad

I heard rumours but now it's official. As of next week the call centre in Israel will cease to exist and all calls will be transferred elsewhere. It's not quite clear from the announcement (in Hebrew only) whether it only refers to the reservations line or also to the BAEC team.

Not a grand surprise but a pity It is also not quite clear to me what will be the status of IB call centre, which operated jointly.

flatlander

Where have BA found a stash of Hebrew speakers outside Israel?

It's one of the hardest call center languages to hire in the rest of the world (in my company's experience).

Good luck to BA on this one...

Schwann

I'm sure there'll be some major back patting and performance bonuses in Waterside this morning now BA know they can afford to offer more Ł19 fares to Europe at the expense of it's employees careers and livelihoods.

Worcester

Perhaps they are using the Brexit method of just talking slowly and loudly in English with one or two Spanish or French words randomly dropped in, till the understand.

corporate-wage-slave

Possibly they have near to the Newcastle and Manchester call centres, both of which have significant Jewish communities and colleges living not so far away.

Innocent Abroad

According to a new report in the Israeli media the new centre is located indeed in the UK.

corporate-wage-slave

So BA is following a very recent trend of on-shoring!

In the case of Newcastle there is a longstanding community in Gateshead and there is a prestigious yeshiva for Orthodox Judaism. I guess some students - and spouses of the students - may well be interested in part or fulltime employment with BA just a few miles away, though the language skills will be fairly varied I suspect given its international student body.

clubman

The BAEC team are going. They told me months ago, and the atmosphere there (as you can imagine) has been terrible.

It's a sad day, and the fantastic team will really be missed.

squawk

I know this area rather well. As @corporate-wage-slave says, it is a highly prestigious centre of Haredim learning - I believe it is the most significant outside Israel and the United States - and there is a growing settled community with a fascinating history, alongside a diverse international student body. It is a depressing sign of the times that the community has in recent years had to become much more aware of their own security.

One thing that I am not certain of, however, is whether the graduates of the colleges there (even those who are not international students and who wish to remain local) would aspire to a customer service role with BA. The community is fairly insular, and my (limited) understanding of the Yeshiva curriculum is that it is mainly orientated around the Talmud and related studies.

gms

I'm just amazed to learn that BA has retained a country-specific call centre for so long! Especially one with just 2 flights a day. It must have stayed under the bean counter radar somehow!

Innocent Abroad

In summer schedule there are 3 flights a day (sometimes 3 LH aircrafts) plus it also handled IB's operations so not really surprising; on top of that Hebrew is not such a wide-spread language. That said, nowhere did it say that the new call-centre will provide service in Hebrew...

DominicB

As one who flies this route with regularity, I've always been struck by the fact that BA only have an interest in offering on-board announcements and airport staff who speak only one of the two official languages of Israel. Given that Israeli Arabs loath flying on El Al, I've never understood why BA does not make them more appropriately welcome.

Innocent Abroad

BTW, Arabic is no longer an official language in Israel.

sds1493

The yeshiva curriculum certainly does not involve learning a spoken Hebrew,, plus there is a push towards Rabbinic professions. However, as c-w-s mentions, the spouses of these students might be interested. That being said, I haven't seen any ads for such positions.
Approximately how many staff would such a call center handle?
IME Israeli Arabs tend to fly TK. Ultimately though, BA must have decided that there aren't enough passengers to TLV who don't understand English or Hebrew.

BOH

You forgot that with each repetition of the same sentence not being understood is to raise the voice until it is.