British Airways empowers cabin crew to deliver personalized customer service

British Airways is to issue its 15,000 cabin crew with iPhone XRs to help them offer a more personalised service to customers. The investment for all cabin crew members follows a successful trial of iPads for senior cabin crew on board every flight.

The new phones will be loaded with 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 at their fingertips, including previous flights and meal preferences, enabling them to personalise every interaction.

Bradley Smith, 27, one of the first cabin crew to receive a brand-new iPhone XRs says 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.

“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.”

Karen Slinger, British Airways’ head of Inflight Customer Experience, said: “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.”