A British Airways customer has shared their frustrating experience with the British Airways customer service chatbot after it couldn’t even recognize the airline’s main hub at London Heathrow Airport.
Sharing a video of the maddening interaction with the chatbot, part of BA’s £350 million investment in its dilapidated IT infrastructure, Paddy Lennox called the people behind the chatbot a “bunch of goons.”
Watch on TikTok
The conversation started with a fairly simple question as the chatbot asked Paddy to tell it where he was flying. The chatbot then suggested that Paddy either type the city or airport code – such as London or LHR for London Heathrow.
Paddy replied with LHR, but having just given this airport code as its primary example, the chatbot couldn’t understand what Paddy meant.
“I’m sorry, I don’t recognize this city or airport,” the chatbot replied.
Paddy again typed LHR but the chatbot still couldn’t understand what he meant, telling Paddy: “Be sure to check the spelling and make sure it’s a place in which British Airways operates.”
For his third attempt at trying to interact with the chatbot, Paddy typed London but was yet again hit with a message from the failing computer system that it didn’t recognize that city name.
“It’s your capital city; it’s probably where your head office is,” Paddy said in a frustrated tone in a voiceover to accompany the video.
For a fourth go, Paddy then types Heathrow but is once again rebuffed by the chatbot. “It’s only your hub airport, you absolute goons,” Paddy says as he tires of trying to get the chatbot to work.
For a final attempt, however, Paddy types: “The capitol city of England, London,” but, you guessed it, the chatbot failed to recognize this as a place that British Airways flies from.
“Jesus, British Airways, how do you not recognize LHR when you give LHR as an example,” Paddy then types, but his effort is to little avail.
“BA’s website is an absolute disgrace. far away the worst out of any airline,” one person wrote in response to Paddy’s video that was posted to TikTok. Another posted: “British Airways are actually trolling us with how god awful their website is,” while a third joked: “I actually think this is an improvement on most interactions I’ve had with humans who work for British Airways.”
Late last year, BA chief executive Sean Doyle claimed that an IT outage that temporarily grounded flights and took down the airline’s website and phone lines was actually proof that the airline’s investment in new computers was working.
In an internal memo, Doyle said that a similar outage only a couple of years ago would have resulted in a days-long operational meltdown that would have stranded tens of thousands of passengers.
In last November’s outage, however, a key backup system was brought online in just over an hour, meaning that the airline could get flights back in the air.
Much of BA’s investment is being spent on moving computer systems to a much more reliably cloud-based platform, while the airline is also working on a new website and mobile app.
While some of the investments in the website and app are designed to iron out numerous kinks and improve the customer experience, the airline has also made no secret of the fact that it is also driving new upselling opportunities and dynamic pricing.
In early 2024, British Airways said it had earmarked £100 million from its £750 million IT investment to develop machine learning, automation, and artificial intelligence – hopefully, the chatbot didn’t take up too much of that budget.
He was quite polite through all of that! I can’t STAND a stupid chatbot. I usually yell a profanity and disconnect.