Almost self service
Those of us who travel regularly have, presumably, all switched over to self service bookings. Reserve on-line, check in on-line, manage bookings on line. Or almost.
I was due to travel tomorrow with a colleague, who is unfortunately rather ill, so I’m going alone. Down was a cheap no-refund job, so that’s fine, it’s gone. The return was refundable with BA Connect. I checked the website, and I could cancel the whole booking, but if I wanted to cancel for only one passenger I had to call in.
I did call in, and the process was painless and efficient. What interested me, though, was the technique that was used. The BA staffer split the booking in two, allocating a new booking ref for Iain’s ticket, and then cancelled that, leaving mine intact. A simple, effective solution to the problem, but one that the web site designers didn’t, or couldn’t access.
How much of that was due to the legacy system that BA uses, as opposed to new systems used by the like of easyJet where you can do pretty much anything on-line. How much competitive advantage do companies with flexible back office systems gain?
