Nice apology from Willie Walsh BA’s CEO. But and its a big but….its 4 days too late. Anybody can go out and say sorry when the crisis is over and a solution is in place i.e. the snow is melting. It’s much harder to face the music when the problem is still very real. The mistake BA has made is that Willie Walsh should have been giving updates from the start. Who advises these large companies on the use of social media? Their PR agencies?. Okay, Mr Walsh it’s all better now let’s get you out in front of the customers and issue an apology, same approach from BP. When will they get the fact that they were slammed in social media and his chance to make this better is over. If I was advising Willie Walsh and BA I would have told him to make a recording every day from the start and put it on BA’s home page. They had a bland infuriating message on there for days with no real information on what was actually happening now it’s over they roll out the charming Irish man to fix their image.
It’s no longer that simple somebody tell BA’s PR agency.
But………………its at Heathrow and I am in Phoenix. BA Online is not offering re-booking and after two hours I finally get British Airways on the phone and the estimated wait time is wait for it 420 minutes. Now I know the weather is no body’s fault but the way the situation is handled most certainly is. Where are British Airways emergency back up procedures. Why are they not opening call centers all over the world and re-directing these calls to them. They used to back in the day when they actually were a customer service focused organization. I don’t care what it costs them, it will cost them a lot more in lost customers in the future if they do not step up and manage the communication on this fiasco better.
This is not some routine weekend in February this is the Christmas holidays the way BA is handling the situation is insensitive and callous with complete disregard for the impact this is having on their customers
The following is a report on a session I gave at Thunderbird School of Global Management on the 18th of November. I am still amazed that people especially the younger generation do not understand the implications of making their personal lives public on social media. There is now a statistic from Careerbuilder which indicates that 80% of employers google potential hires. That pretty resume may mean very little if they find you love to get drunk, smoke pot and fall over on a regular basis.
See the full report here Online Reputation Management – Golden Rules
