When an organization introduces a significant or unwelcome change or is grappling with a public relations crisis, it’s fairly common practice for employees to be issued with a ‘talking points’ document to help guide workers in how to address customer complaints.
British Airways is not only introducing a significant and controversial change to how it operates its frequent flyer program, but it is also dealing with a serious customer relations disaster and reputational meltdown as a direct result of those changes.
Yet six days after British Airways unexpectedly broke the news in the midst of the festive break that many frequent flyers will now find elite status all but impossible to achieve, the airline still hasn’t provided detailed guidance to many employees on the changes.
As a result, these employees know as little about the impending changes as passengers – but only from what they have read online or if they have sought out the airline’s official press release.
Announced just months before coming into effect, from April, frequent flyers will have to spend at least £7,000 per year just to get lounge access, while access to a better quality lounge will set flyers back at least £20,000 to unlock Gold status.
In order to achieve BA’s most elite frequent flyer status of Gold Guest List, passengers must spend an eye-watering £65,000 and then £40,000 every year thereafter.
It’s not that the switch to a so-called ‘revenue-based’ loyalty program wasn’t expected, but the near no-notice announcement, as well as the astronomical spending requirements, have seriously riled some of BA’s most loyal customers.
A ‘talking points’ document would have anticipated customer concerns and provided employees with appropriate responses that would ensure a uniform and accurate delivery of information on the changes.
It turns out, however, that customer-facing staff, including call center agents, check-in staff, and cabin crew, were not provided any form of briefing on the changes, even as the enormity of the customer and media backlash started to become apparent.
Some call center staff were provided with a briefing shortly after the press release was published, but this was only available to staffers who happened to be on duty at the time. It then took several days for more detailed guidance to be issued.
Other frontline employees have, however, still not been provided with key messaging guidance.
A ‘talking points’ brief is most successful when employees can be open and honest about the changes that are being introduced. Rather obtusely, however, British Airways says the wildly unpopular changes to its loyalty program were directly based on customer feedback.
It’s widely believed, however, that the changes are being introduced partly to reduce pressure on BA’s premium lounge network, which, especially at its London Heathrow fortress hub, is bursting at the seams.
British Airways has yet to address these concerns or provide further context on why the changes are being introduced or why they are being hurried in with little notice.
Typical big corporation mismanagement, introduce a policy at one of the busiest times of the year hoping most people won’t notice it happening and then leaving the little people who actually have to deal with the general public the unpleasant task of trying to explain it. This change looks like it was rushed out with no real advance planning at all.
It’s a crap airline and without the BAEC exec club, they’ll be haemorrhaging customers… just let it shrink / die / reduce profits when people vote with their bookings.
It’s not as though BA treat their own workforce reasonably…
I don’t think it will.
Planes will still fly full most of the time.
some routes wont see a differnece but the number of people who sit in CE to some ruopean destinations are doing it purely for the TP. I’ve been on some flights where CE was mainly full of these TP chasers. Those flights will not have those CE customers anymore
I have little issue with the new club.
The vast majority of flyers are unaffected
Oh for goodness sake, any passenger stupid enough to interrogate an ordinary member of staff about a decision that was made at Board level deserves to be ignored.
Any good service organisation will always consider the potential fallout when removing customer benefits. In this case it seems they don’t care about customers, it’s a crazy approach to ignore the fall out. But worse they are throwing their frontline staff under the bus by not supporting them or providing specialised training to handle the fallout. It will be intetesting to see the financials after this year and it’s impact on BA profits.