British Airways has announced that all of its 15,000 cabin crew will be issued with iPhone XRs, enabling them to offer a more personalised service to over 45 million customers that travel with the airline every year.
The new phones will feature a selection of apps to help crew offer customers instant additional assistance during their journey. They will also have access to a range of customer information on their phones, including previous flights and meal preferences. The investment for all cabin crew members follows a successful trial of iPads for senior cabin crew on board every flight.
Bradley Smith, one of the first cabin crews to receive a brand-new iPhone XRs, said the phones are enabling a step-change in customer service. ‘Recently, when a customer realised that he had forgotten to order a special meal, he was really impressed when I quickly took out the phone, logged onto ba.com and ordered a meal for his return journey – all within a matter of minutes in the middle of the flight,’ Smith said.
‘It felt so rewarding to be able to immediately resolve the situation for the customer. All my crew reference guides are also loaded onto the phone, so everything I need is in my pocket throughout each flight; it really has made a huge difference already,’ he added.
Karen Slinger, British Airways’ Head of Inflight Customer Experience, added: ‘Our customers spend up to 14 hours with our cabin crew on a single flight and we know from the recent success at the Skytrax Awards that the care provided by our people has a huge impact on the overall customer experience and is what sets us apart from other airlines. This investment is about further empowering our crew and providing them with everything they need to deliver the very best service to our customers while in the air.’
Earlier this year, the airline launched Help Me; a brand-new section of ba.com to help customers make changes to their bookings and find out more about their consumer rights. The airline also announced a multi-million-pound investment in training for its staff based at Heathrow, with every agent now trained to help customers with a range of different queries and personally reach out to them at the airport using iPads loaded with a host of specialist apps, British Airways said.
