Why do they make it soooo hard…?
I wanted to give BA a constructive suggestion to improve their website. It’s a site I know all too well, and I must say it’s pretty good and encouragingly actually gets better with each new iteration. The suggestion I was going to make was something I’ve been annoyed at for some time now: when you book a flight for your family online, the site does not allow you to enter Executive Club numbers for children which is a real pain in the ass, because now you have to check in physically at the airport and remember to give the agent the kids’ numbers or (and this is what I was doing this evening) you have to go through the somewhat tedious process of claiming ‘missing’ miles online after the fact. What makes this all the more annoying / dumb is that it would make no difference to their booking process to allow a field for the executive club number for all passengers; it is not a required field so I cannot see how their web workflow is improved or simplified by excluding this option. Ah but you might ask, how many kids have executive club numbers? Well obviously I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there is quite a few as BA has a great ‘family account’ where you can pool miles from all family members, so if Mom and/or Dad have a card given their frequent business travel, it makes sense to sign up the kids too even if they only fly a couple times a year…
Anyhow why am I writing about this on my blog? Well sheer frustration. Spent a good 15 minutes trying to find a ’suggestions’ mail address or forum or something on the site and nada… One way commerce… we speak - you listen. Very annoying. They should have a blog. Maybe they are scared of their customers? We’re not all angry. At least not all the time. And it would be a million times more useful than those stupid surveys you hand out in the plane that just annoys your clients and embarrasses your staff. I guess no one at BA has read Scoble or Doc or Euan. (Euan there has to be a consulting gig there for you!)
If somehow this message does get to someone at BA who is responsible for the website, please fix the booking bug outlined above. Thanks.
***Update***
Dom has some ’suggestions’ for BA too! …could the someone referred to above fix this as well?
January 17th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Something not quite right here. I have a household account, which has its benefits and its drawbacks. I thought one of the key benefits was that I could enter the Exec Club memberships ONCE for all of them.
So far it has worked for me. I’d be intrigued to know what I did that you can’t do.
I thought the problem was more to do with getting their cards up from Blue, which is real hard work. Particularly since they travel BA miles a lot of the time…
January 17th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
When you book a flight for cash the site asks you how many adults, children and infants at the start…then once you’ve selected your flight, it asks you to fill in the title, name and (for adults only) the executive club number of each person flying.
If memory serves me correctly when booking with miles you don’t have the same issue (although it is somewhat moot as you don’t get credit for flying with miles, do you?)
January 17th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
This reminds me of a netcast I listened to last week. It was an interview with David Platt, author of _Why Software Sucks_
http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail1694.html
Platt stole that book idea from me. Of course I was going to title mine _Why I Want to Dump out a 55 Gallon Drum of WhoopAss and Pain on My Corporate IT Department_
Same basic idea, but Platt’s title is shorter and makes for easier searches on Amazon because you don’t have to remember if “WhoopAss” is two words or one.
One of the great examples that Platt brings up is how much better Google is at looking up UPS tracking numbers compared to using UPS.com. I wish that Google could help you with BA too. And I wish they could make me a sandwich.
Nice rant post, BTW.
-JD
January 19th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Having banged myself against the brick wall that is BA on a number of occasions and come very closing to pulling out of the Executive Club altogether out of frustration at their bewildering support systems I agree there is a need there Andy - just not sure I am up to the task!
:-)
January 19th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
And why the hell did I call you Andy!!!!!
February 17th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Dell has learned their lesson from their poor customer service days… check out http://www.dellideastorm.com/
Very nicely done.
February 25th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Thanks for the pointer Eugene, hadn’t seen previously. -s