Strategic Marketing Analysis: British Airways' Customer Service Issues

This report delves into the strategic marketing challenges faced by British Airways, a leading UK airline. It identifies poor customer service as a primary issue, analyzing its impact on the company's brand image and market share. The report examines the root causes of these problems, including inadequate employee training, poor communication channels, and a lack of customer-centric focus. It then proposes a course of action that includes improving customer relationship management, enhancing employee training, and implementing effective pricing strategies to regain customer trust and improve financial performance. The report emphasizes the importance of these actions in restoring British Airways' market position and achieving a strong return on investment by improving customer satisfaction and loyalty. The analysis incorporates various sources to support the findings and recommendations.

Strategic marketing

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................3
1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY..............................................................................................................3
2. ANALYSIS OF A CURRENT MARKETING PROBLEM.............................................................4
3. PROPOSED FUTURE COURSE OF ACTION..............................................................................6
4. IMPLEMENTATION AND IMPACT OF THE PROPOSED ACTION..........................................9
5. INTERDEPENDENCIES AND REFLECTION..............................................................................9
CONCLUSION...................................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES...................................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
Strategic Marketing consists of marketing goals and objectives that are required to generate
a good marketing strategy of the company. The research is based on the marketing strategic issues
faced by British Airways. British Airways is a leading airline company of United Kingdom
providing premium services to its customers. The research analysed the current marketing problem
faced by the companies (Wilson and Gilligan, 2012). The company lately is facing issues related to
poor customer services. The report studies the impact of the problem on the brand image of
company A plan proposed plan is presented for rectifying the challenges faced by the company and
implementation have been generated in order to resolve the issue.
1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The report discusses the problem of poor customer services faced by British Airways. It is
evident that the company is losing market share due to rise in consumer complaints. Customers are
losing their trust with the company and on the other hand BA is losing consumer participation in the
company. The customer base of the company has reduced and the potential customers of the
company are also getting affected by the hampered image of the airline company in the market. The
problem has given rise to sale issue as other departments are also getting impacted by this problem.
The customer executives have been criticized by top professionals of the company due to which
employees morales have been hampered. British Airways image has been deteriorated over the
time, that customer prefers services of competitors over BA.
In order to improve this situation it is recommended that managers build better customer
relationship management in the company. Cordial relationship among the employees and the
customers will help the company in resolving issues faced by the customers. Communication
channels must also be improved to help employee grow in the company. Proper training of the
existing staff has to be done along with recruitment of talented professionals in the airline company.
Training will improve the quality of services provided by the executives, which will in return
promote quality of work performance. British Airways also has to implement appropriate pricing
policies and must give incentives and awards for top performance generate by an employee.
Customers will have to be attracted by generating low pricing policies along with the rewards pints
and discounts to the customers.
The proposed course of action is justified and feasible as it will help he company restore the
rusted image of the airline company in the market. Business benefits of the proposed plan will be
evident from the rise in sale and revenue margins. By implementing these marketing strategy, BA
will be able retain its customers. British airways will be able to achieve handsome amount as return
on investment by implementing this marketing strategy. As company improves its market share it

will be able to improve financials which will term to be profitable for BA.
2. ANALYSIS OF A CURRENT MARKETING PROBLEM
Companies Overview
British Airways is a carrier airline of UK that is known as the largest airline company in
United Kingdom. BA is considered to be the largest supplier of passengers from one destination to
another. It is a global service airline which offers low fares in order to attract customer traffic
towards the organisation. As per Bennett, in the past, BA expanded through mergers and
acquisitions of many companies (Bennett, 2014). This airline company provides many premium
offers and advantages to increase customer satisfaction. Robertson and Wardrop, states that
although, British Airways offers a variety of services and considers the comfort of passengers as
their number one priority (Robertson and Wardrop, 2012). The customer have reported of ill
treatment which lead to low customer satisfaction among them. This has further tarnished the brand
image of the company.
Problems faced by British Airways
British Airways is currently facing customer service related issues. It was critically analysed
that consumers have constantly complained about poor treatment done with them by the employees
and the staff. Twitter and Facebook are the largest medium where customers are constantly
criticized about the bad services of the organization. It is evident that company lacks in active
communication with its customers. For example, David, before boarding flight from Phoenix to
London, his wife got sick and they had to postpone their flight (Christie, 2014). So, in order to get
payback of his flight with a legitimate doctor’s appointment, he was constantly kept on hold by the
assistant. Although, it already took him 10 minutes to get a chance to talk to the customer service
executive after a long hold on the phone . He constantly had to explain to his problem to three
different executives and they asked him to pay extra $600 for his demand to seat his wife and
daughter together. Even after paying for seats on boarding they found their seats to be scattered in
the plane (Solomon, Russell-Bennett and Previte, 2012). This way of poor communication and
assistance led to a greater customer service problem.
Furthermore, Felzensztein, Brodt and Gimmon said that customers also complain about the
executives as they are not responding to their mails and phone calls (Felzensztein, Brodt and
Gimmon, 2014). Helplines are always engaged and take minimum 15 minutes time to get in touch
with a customer executive. Altogether, telephone lines are useless towards solving issues of their
customers. On the online complaint forum on twitter, customer finds the same monotonous reply of
BA's executive. They send the same old generic tweet of helping their customer in a “short while”.
BA's customers also complain about them continuing the flight to take off before solving the
problems faced by the respective customers. On the other hand, they provide no information or

assistance in cases when people loss their luggage after arriving to a certain destination. They would
repeatedly say that “ they are trying their best to trace luggage” (Olga, 2014). All the above
problems faced by the customers are due to poor customer support and assistance. Beetles and
Strong, in order to achieve market share to international boundaries, BA has failed in achieving
customer loyalty towards them (Beetles and Strong, 2015). Despite people lodging their complains
on various different platforms, it was noticed that company lacked in providing support as no
respective chain of assistance was adequately visible in solving issues of the customers.
Reasons of the problems faced by the company.
Main reason of poor customer service is the company’s thinking of not caring about the
loyalty of customers. This is generated from poorly trained staff, as company pays less time to train
their employees. It further leads to poor customer service. It can be critiqued that BA has not paid
attention on proper selection and evaluation of its employees. Poor assistance with the customers
through mails and calls leads to the consumers adapting online social media platforms for raising
their issues. It is evident from the above example that customer service executives transfers call
from from one executives to another (Haque, 2015). This gestures irritates and frustrates customer
and adds up to the existing feeling of dissatisfaction in the customers.
As per Thrassou, Vrontis, Chebbi and Yahiaoui, BA has been paying more attention towards
generating a good target matrix. Target matrix in any organisation encourages to achieve the target
of generating maximum customer support (Thrassou, Vrontis, Chebbi and Yahiaoui, 2012). If
company will constantly focus on increasing the market share and not satisfying customers’ needs
and wants, then it will automatically lead to poor customer service. Employees are termed to be the
soul of company’s policies and strategy. They are the face behind the company’s brand image. It is
important for employees to engage in better communication method to resolve issues faced by the
customers. However if, employees focus less on prioritizing the needs of customers, they end up
sabotaging their job responsibilities as well. BA is a big multinational brand, still it has low
customer service and support channels. There are less executives and helplines are very engaged so
it is unable to support customers (Jason, 2015). Along with this it can be argued that, company
does not consider its customer relation unit to be an effective part of revenue generation. BA have
failed to create the customer service department as a part of strategic chain for profit maximization
British airways has failed to fulfil its promises that are made to provide premium class
services to its customers. Mooradian, Matzler and Ring, states that the airline Company is not
keeping up with its promise to hear and resolve issues faced by the customers (Mooradian, Matzler
and Ring, 2012). Poor customer service also arises from poor employee participation in the
organisation. If, employees are happy and satisfied with their jobs they will try their best to make
their customers happy as well. BA's employees don't believe in the policies and strategies of Airline

Company. In many cases it is evident about, people complaining of rude and we-dont-care
behaviour of its employees. Their employees have self-centred personality and lack in
understanding the requirements of its customers. Too much complaints lower the confidence level
of employees and they tend to behave in a negative way (McQuerrey and Media, 2015). This occurs
when there is no proper system of motivating employees in order to boost their confidence.
Moreover, keeping the issues unresolved for a greater time leads to low customer support. But,
Customer requires that their issue to be resolved in shortest time period. In David's case, support
services were inaccessible and low quality of service was provided to him. Complete information
was not provided to David and he was misled with false promise of providing seats near to each
other even after paying a respective amount to the company (Lackman and Lanasa, 2013). Hiding
facts and information from customers generate disrespect towards company’s policies and disrupts
in promoting customer loyalty.
Impact on the company
As discussed above, poor customer service has destroyed the goodwill of company in the
market. Francis and Media found that company has lost its brand value and it lacks in fulfilling
promises made to the customers (Francis and Media, 2016). Losing effectiveness of brand is not
considered fruitful for the reputation of company in the customer's eye. Poor customer service
generates break in customer loyalty. BA has started to loss its current customers due to unresolved
issues of customers. If, present customers loss their connectivity and support with the company,
then potential customers also loss their faith in receiving services from the company. British
Airways has generated an identity of providing premium customer services. Loss of which
generated bad mouth publicity. This made company to lose its existing and forthcoming customers.
Airline Company also lost repeat customers traffic due to non-fulfilment of requirements (Zikmund
and Babin, 2012). Company also failed to retain customer engagement towards various schemes,
discounts and offers. On the contrary, Customers have been frustrated with the support services and
hence they are losing interest toward the various new schemes brought by the company. As
company is not paying attention to resolve the issues and problems of customers, so they are losing
their growth potential in the market. Business prospects of the company is getting disrupted by the
same. This in turn lacks company in achieving its sales target which later will lead to lower revenue
margins (Top 10 reasons for poor customer service and their solutions, 2007). British Airways has
lost customer’s loyalty towards the product and services. Kaynak, E. and Kucukemiroglu found
that, company is doing very little to improve channels for customers to resolve their issues (Kaynak,
E. and Kucukemiroglu, 2015). All the above problem have tarnished company’s image in the
market. They have lost their comparative position as competitors have taken advantage of the
problem faced by company. British Airways employees and executives have eventually lost their

confidence due to the damaged image of airline company in the market.
Pestle analysis
Pestle analysis is a tool to analyse the strategic position of the company in the micro
environment. To understand the environmental factors that are affecting British Airways, Pestle
analysis is been done as followed.
Political-
The airline industry of UK is controlled and regularly monitored. The government has
formulated various policies and regulations which are to abided by British Airways. Their are strict
standard of maintaining safety and security of consumers. European Union also emphasize on
safeguarding interest of consumers as well as consumers. The international aviation organization is
the responsible body to control safety standard of the airline industry.
Economic-
Economic fluctuation creates issues and challenges for the company. The company has to
increase its pricing policies if there are change in the interest rates of the bank. Also the airline
industry faced great losses due to the 2008 recession. Increase in oil and gas prices or financial criss
in United kingdom directly generates heavy impact on the strategies of British Airways.
Social-
As it is known that the company formulates policies based on the cultural significance of a
country. Decline in consumers taste and preferences affects the demand of the services provided by
the airline company. Consumers prefer to choose branded services rather then the new or low
conceptualized services of any company. Consumers require that the whole experience of flying
must generate them value for their money. If the company doesn't stays confide to the same it may
loose customers loyalty.
Technological-
Being technologically advanced is the main feature of the airline industry. British Airways
has to maintain the its website in order to provide customer with every sort of information. Airlines
have to provide Wi-Fi facility at the airports in order to attract customers towards the company. The
company has to be technologically well equipped to perform in an efficient way.
Legal-
The airline industry is regulated by the legal structure of the country. For example BA has to
abide by the competition law formulated by the UK government in order to stay away from any
legal damage. In the same way there are many other law formulate to safeguard the interest of
consumers and the employees working for British Airways.
Environmental-
Aviation industry faces many challenges due to environmental factors of both mad made and

natural hazards. The companies have to try their best to lower the carbon footprint that they emit.
Pollution is another major issue of the airline industry. BA tries to use renewable sources of energy
in order to comply with the sustainable measures. By doing same , the company has top increase its
prices of policy fir use sustainable measures. This in return discourages consumer participation the
company as they tend not to buy expensive tickets.
3. PROPOSED FUTURE COURSE OF ACTION
By analysing problem of poor customer services provided by the company it is evident that
the company needs to improve its strategies to emphasize on improving the problem faced by the
company. The above part proposes the future course of action that has to be taken into consideration
by the company in order to resolve the issue faced so far. Post purchase services- In order to understand customer behaviour BA needs to generate
policies in generating feedback after purchasing. Post purchase services must be created like
phone calls mails and customer forms. The aim of these services is to understand customer
satisfaction from the services provided by the company (Wilson and Gilligan, 2012). Post
purchase the customer try to analyse and rate the services been offered and the experience
they were able to generate from the same. British Airways management needs to adopt strict
policy and must identify as to how the customer satisfaction can be understood. As by
understanding customer behaviour towards BA's services company will be able to achieve
loyalty and generate satisfaction of the customers. Only after understanding what are their
customers needs, wants and experience, better services can be generated. Post the purchase
of tickets executives can generate feedback from the customer. The data can be stored
which will later help the company in case of any issue faced by the customer (Foxall, 2014).
The history of the post purchase experience with the customer will provide the company
with the knowledge about the areas where the executives failed to generate satisfaction. CRM- Customer relationship management is a strategy to manage companies relationship
with its current and potential customers. The company under CRM policies analyses and
manages data of customers interaction to understand their needs and wants (Chacour and
Ulaga, 2015). The main of aim is to improve the customer and companies relationships in
order to maximize its profits. British Airways has to generate better customer relationship
management in order to improve the relationship that have been hampered by poor customer
support services. The Electronic CRM system must be easy to understand for the employees
of BA. The company must provide efficient graining to the employees to effectively use
CRM. Through CRM BA will be able to understand customers needs and wants and
maintaining E-CRM will lead to effectively mange the relationship between both the parties
(Kotler, 2012). Customer relationship management will also lead to timeline the action to be

taken to resolve issues faced by the customers of BA. Honest Pricing policies- British Airways has to generate polices that promote honesty and
integrity of companies pricing policy. The company must provide with adequate price of the
tickets and services it provides to its customer (West, Ford and Ibrahim, 2015). The
employees have to keep in mind to provide with complete disclosure about the information
related to price of the services. This will lead to generate honesty among its customers. BA
has to avoid misleading its customers about the charges it levies on them after and before
boarding their flights. In case of exchange and cancellation the executives must pay
attention on providing hassle free procedure and provide discount in order to reduce the
feeling of irritation among its customers. The prices of the companies services must be made
to best suit customers needs. High priced policy disrupts customers interest towards the
airline company (Hollensen, 2015). Whereas lowering prices will lead to losing the support
of niche class. Thus the policies must be made in accordance to the different demands of the
customers.
 Proper training of employees- British Airways employees respond towards the customers
have been found to be rude and impolite. This is due to the fact that the customer executives
are not provided with effective and proper training. The employees must be trained to not
lose his/her cool while dealing with even the most difficult customers (Proctor, 2014). The
employee must be polite and must know the major issue that a customer faces and
dedicatedly work in resolving each issue. There must be a deadline given to the employees
so that they feel inspired to achieve customer satisfaction. By providing targets company
will be able to achieve its target of resolving issues faced by the customers on daily basis.
The employees must be trained to be able to resolve every issue and problems faced
by the customers (Challagalla, Murtha and Jaworski, 2014). This can be done by improving
gestures and language used by the customer service department. As British Airways
performs in an multinational market. It is obvious to receive calls from various diversified
customers. The companies must be skilled to understand various different languages lie,
Chinese, French, Germany and etc. gestures are the way the executives response to towards
the customer the customer executives have to engage in delivering positive and effective
impression on the customer (Mooradian, Matzler and Ring, 2012). To achieve the same the
executive can first try to calm down the customer who is already frustrated and angry.
He/she can try to cool down the customer by politely understanding their problem. And later
can provide remedied to solve the same. Dedicating resources- British Airways have to dedicate resources of time and money to
maintain the relationship with its customer. The dedicated resources must be used to built

customer service department. The department is entitled to provide support services to the
customers who are facing issues with the companies products (Beetles and Strong, 2014).
British Airways have to inform its customers about the goals and objectives it has
strategized in achieving customer satisfaction. The executives must emphasize on listening
to the problems of the customers, deeply. The employees have to also pay attention on
responding in the appropriate manner to the customer. The customer service department
have to provide with proper tools , objectives and training to the employees. By not
providing effective training to the employees the company has tarnished its engagement
with the customers (Boone and Kurtz, 2013). Employees will be able to perform their task
and duties once they have been guided well by their superiors. The management must ensure
to check the quality of services provided by the department. Monitoring must be time on
daily basis to identify the effectiveness and loopholes in generating customer satisfaction
and engagement towards the services of the company (Morgan, 2012). The management
must also provided time to time inspiration and motivation to the employees. This will
generate confidence and will increase the morales of customers which will lead them in
effective achievement of companies goals and targets. Open communications with employees- British Airways have to work on improving the
communication channel of the organisation. The management must ensure that mutual
coordination is followed among the superiors and subordinates of the airline company. The
mangers can use both formal and informal methods of reviewing performance of the
employees. In the formal way, the management can use management tools to review the
performance of the employees and can provide them with rewards and awards (Gaboriault,
Director, Latham and Rowan, 2012). Informal way requires the manager to build personal
repo with the employee. This way he/she will be able to know whether to employee is
satisfied with the ethics and policies of the company or not. Personal repo with the employee
will also guide the manger in ascertaining whether the employee is dealing with any
personal life crisis or issue. Personal life issues and crisis disrupt the growth of the
employees as it declines the quality of work. This way the manger can also introduce
counselling session for the employees. Any work related issue can be discussed during the
session. As this session will provide therapy to the employees and will help to tackle with
the stress due to work policies of British Airway (Robertson and Wardrop, 2012)s.
Generating honest communication channel in the organisational level will let the employee
to engage in the working environment of the company. The manger can bring in employees
together to talk about ways to succeed in the particular work form. This will guide and
mentor the other employees as well. Open communication also includes constant

communication between the employees and superiors. The management of the company can
once a while create open session which will include the superior management to conduct
their ideology and beliefs with the employees. Employees have to be reminded about their
importance towards British Airways. As they are the projectors of companies image in front
of the customers (Nijssen and Frambach, 2013). In order to resolve the problem of poor
customer support service , effective communication have to involved as the major part of
operations.
SWOT analysis of the strategy-
Swot analysis is used to evaluate the internal strengths and weakness of the company, on the
other hand its also identifies the external opportunities and threats that may affect the business
prospect of the company. The analysis is performed as under-
Strengths Weakness
 Brand image in the international and
domestic market.
 Technologically advanced to support the
E-CRM.
 Experienced human resource to train the
employees
 Weak marketing campaign reduces the
brand position in customers eye.
 Poor customer service takes away
customers support and loyalty towards
the company.
 Rising competition to create a problem to
cater to the needs and wants of the
customers.
 Bargaining issues faced by the company
of the employee union of BA
Opportunities Threat
 Expansion opportunities in the emerging
economies.
 To improve the customers support
services.
 To gain market share by appointing new
marketing strategies.
 Improvement in the current products and
services of the company.
 Intense competitive strategies of the
competitors in the international market.
 To be able to serve to the requirements of
the customers.
 To improve users experience with flying
in British Airways.
 High dependence in the UK market.
Marketing Mix-

Marketing Mix is a marketing tool used to analyse the right combination of four P's of the
company. The four P's are price, place, promotion and product.
 Product-
British Airways provides premium product services to its customers. The company has designed its
services in a way that it can satisfy the needs of different class of the society. The tariffs of the
tickets are at a reasonable rate to attract customers. Although, the company lacks in generating
maximum customer satisfaction,. As the customer support services are not up to the standard of the
company.
 Place-
The company aims to serve to the diversified needs of its international customers. The infrastructure
of the company is very well mma8natined. Liaisons and acquisitions have been done with many
companies in order to capture market space in the international boundaries. Their channel of
distribution comprises of the travel agents, call centres and companies websites. Apart from this, the
call centres that provide assistance to the customers, is not performing to the expectation of the
customers.
 Price-
The pricing policy are designed in accordance with the middle and upper class consumers. BA
provides discounts, coupons and offers to the customers top attract them. The company has
formulated its pricing policy in a way that the customers do not have to pay large size of their
pockets on purchasing tickets. On the contrary, British Airways have failed to generate the right
information to its customers. Instances of false accuses and hiding information from the customers
have dislocated their brand image in customers eye.
 Promotion-
The company strikes to generate constant innovation in creating new promotional and
marketing schemes to lure customers. The company also has launched its mobile
application in order to engage customer with the brand. It is evident that British Airways is
doing good in advertising companies services it still lacks to build a rapport with its
customers. The company has to work on promoting cordial relationship with its customers
in order to raise customer traffic.
Brand Theory-
The value based brand theory states that in order to build customers it is important for the
company to generate value to the services provided to the customers. The success of BA's strategy
depends upon the brand value it delivers to the customers. As per this theory customers are the
supreme strand of company value proposition. Thus British Airways must ensure to add premium
services to the consumers experience in the flight. Customer must be understood properly in order