Customer Relationship Management Report: British Airways Analysis

This report, prepared for a CRM manager, analyzes the customer relationship management issues faced by British Airways, a major UK airline. It begins with an overview of the airline industry's CRM challenges, including social media issues and passenger comfort, and then focuses specifically on British Airways. The report identifies key problems such as infrastructural failures (IT system glitches), digital media marketing shortcomings, and communication breakdowns. It provides recommendations for improvement, emphasizing the enhancement of communication strategies, including relevance and timeliness, and the importance of robust infrastructural maintenance, particularly in IT systems. The report concludes by summarizing the analysis of CRM problems and proposed decision-making processes to rectify the issues and regain customer relationship efficiency. The references include sources that support the research.

Running head: CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT
CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author Note

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Customer relationship management can be defined as an approach in order to maintain
and manage a company’s interactions with current and prospective customers (Koegler et al.
2013). Customer relationship, in an organization, is a necessity because customers are the
individuals who provide revenue to the company. The respective paper is introspection of a
customer management problem that is faced by an organization and also the decision- making
processes that might be proposed by me, as a customer relationship manager, in order to rectify
the faults and regain the efficiency of customer relationship management within the organization.
The company taken for the respective paper is British Airways.
Background
CRM issues faced by airlines of UK: an overview
Airline industry in the United Kingdom is prolific and ever evolving. The market of the
United Kingdom is vast and the airline industries of the United Kingdom are considered to be
one of the most active industries in the world (Hendriks and Andrew 2017). Annual turnover of
the air transport industries in the United Kingdom from the year 2008 to 2016 was approximately
30 million Euros. However, there are certain basic challenges that are faced by the airline
industries of UK which have been enumerated hereafter.
1. Social media issues: The social media can play a very influential role in the life of
business concerns all over the world. With the help of social media, a business would be
able to advertise its products with the help of blogs, websites and other digital media
contents. Often the airlines face lack of proper digital media marketing strategies which
creates a lack of communication between them and the customers (prospective and

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functional) that often undermines the customer engagement practices of the airlines
(Shaw 2016).
2. Comfort of the passengers: Since the UK airlines industry focuses excessively on the
profitability, it has been performing poorly when it comes to comfort of the passengers.
The quality of the airlines industry has been undermined on expense of the quantity
(Shaw 2016). The most important factor of UK is being a prolific country for airlines
industry with high skilled, well trained and educated labor and management but with
Euro- zone crisis followed by Brexit, the economy of UK had to be given an impetus
(Hendriks and Andrew 2017). Due to the respective reason, the UK industries are making
efforts to earn profit and revenue. Such conditions have lead to a loss in quality and
standard of the airlines and the customers are facing issues such as discomfort and lack of
attention (Griggs and Howarth 2016).
Overview of the company
The company British Airways (BA) is a popular flag carrier airline company of the
United Kingdom. The company has its headquarters at Waterside, near the area of
Harmondsworth country in the United Kingdom. The company was created in the year 1974
after the British airways board was established by the British government to manage the two
airline enterprises, namely, British Overseas Airways Corporation and British European
Airways. The company British Airways is considered to be the second largest airline company in
the United Kingdom based on the size of the fleet and the number of customers it carries and
caters to, behind the company EasyJet. British Airways merged with Iberia in the year 2011 in
order to create International Airlines Group (IAG), which has been turned into a holding
company having its headquarters in Madrid (Britishairways.com.2019).

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CRM Issues faced by the company
Customer Relationship Management Issues faced by the company British Airways is
provided hereafter. The company British Airways had been facing a plethora of problems in
terms of consumer relationship management, some of the most pressing problems included an
increase in the magnitude of terrorism and terrorist activities within the airports, lack of proper
service and comfort of the consumers, malfunctioning of the technologies and shortage of pilots.
The respective factors are enumerated hereafter.
1. Infrastructural failure: The system failure of the British Airways recently has proved
disastrous for the company as it has delayed and cancelled more than 500 flights as the
result of failure of the system. With computer failure, the Heathrow, Gatwick and City
airports were hit and suffered most of the consequences of Information Technology
failure. Customers also experienced difficulties and problems checking the latest position
of the tickets though digital portals and online and the airline resorted to use manual
system for operating the flights. Such issue has made many passengers boycott the airline
(Theguardian.com.2019).
2. Digital media: The digital media marketing of British Airways is not up to the mark. The
digital media marketing is an important factor in any form of business. Digital marketing
is also called marketing of products and services using digital technologies, mainly
through internet, and also with the help of mobile phones, advertisement and other digital
portals. British Airways was alleged with poor communication on the behalf of the airline
where the customers (both functional and prospective) waited for long hours in order to
receive a proper answer or reply to the general queries and doubts the customers might
have had. The Twitter account of the respective airline was alleged to be deliberately

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delaying its responses or answers to its customers. The passengers also had unpleasant
experiences when they tried to call on the phone line of the company, where it charged
50p a minute when they called the airline through mobile phones. As the passengers
arrived at the respective airport through flight, there had been cases of missing bags
among the passengers and when they went to complain about it through social and digital
media, their reports were not given proper attention and often declined.
3. Communication issues: British Airways has been facing communication issues regarding
customer communication management in the recent times. There had been reported
events of lack of proper communication, delay in communication and communication gap
between the passengers and the airline crews. For instance, there had been an incident of
delay and cancel of a particular flight in the year 2017 which was not announced
beforehand and all the passengers were unnecessarily harassed. During that time, it was
found out that almost 3815 tweets were posted on the social media (twitter) between 9 am
to 10 am mentioning British Airways on 27th May with messages of grievances and
complaints. The most important part of the mistake that British Airways created was that
it did not respond properly to the passengers’ questions and queries. Crisis situations in a
company are bound to happen, however, a company is suggested to be always ready for
any kind of response it has to deliver to its passengers and customers. The social media
platforms, websites and other digital media portals of British Airways, even though the
company might be running in loses, needed to be more functional and active in order to
communicate effectively with the functional as well as the potential customers.
Communication gaps of British Airways and callousness in the areas of responding to the
queries and remaining available for the customers might prove disastrous to the

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organization in terms of customer relationship management
(Corpcommsmagazine.co.uk.2017).
Recommendations
1. Enhancement of communication: As a CRM manager, I have to enhance its
communication skills in order to make customer communication management more
effective and efficient. Communication strategies are a part and parcel of customer
relationship management. A plethora of contemporary and cosmopolitan firms are taking
up customer communication strategies in order to enhance their customer relationship
conditions. An enterprise should always have the endeavor to have the correct and the
most effective communication keeping in mind the economy of language and persuasive
interpersonal skills while the time of delivery of the messages. The British Airways
seems to be lacking in all such qualities and has the issues of delayed communication.
Therefore, I recommend the company to enhance its customer communication by
incorporating relevance in the messages and also maintaining time.
2. Infrastructural maintenance: The airline should take premium care of its information
technology and computer portals. The failure of the IT system of BA recently which
caused cancellation of more than 500 flights proved disastrous and customers have
completely lost hope in the airline. Such situation has created a catastrophic position for
the company and in order to take itself out from such situation, the company might
implement premium technological applications along with a technological panel or
department within the organization (O’Doherty 2015).

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The respective paper concludes to be an introspection of a customer management problem
that is faced by an organization and also the decision- making processes that might be proposed
by me, as a customer relationship executive to the customer relationship manager , in order to
rectify the faults and regain the efficiency of customer relationship management within the
organization. The company taken for the respective paper is British Airways. The paper focuses
on the general CRM issues faced by the airlines industry of UK with special focus on British
Airways with proper recommendations to rectify its faults.

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References:
Britishairways.com.2019. Available at: https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/home#/
Campaignlive.co.uk.2018. Available at: https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/british-airways-
data-breach-poses-new-challenge-weakened-brand-reputation/1492241
Corpcommsmagazine.co.uk.2017. Available at:
https://www.corpcommsmagazine.co.uk/features-and-analysis/view/how-british-airways-forgot-
to-communicate
Griggs, S. and Howarth, D., 2016. The politics of airport expansion in the United Kingdom:
Hegemony, policy and the rhetoric of ‘sustainable aviation’.
Hendriks, N. and Andrew, D., 2017. Airport Regulation in the UK. In The Economic Regulation
of Airports (pp. 101-115). Routledge.
Koegler, A., Moghaddam, H., Haas, C., Wocher, B., Hartig, S., Rajamohan, D., Barnbeck, J.,
Dreidemy, O.M., Mark, A., Wu, Y.C. and Ronnewinkel, C., 2013. Providing customer
relationship management application as enterprise services. U.S. Patent 8,396,749.
Madar, A., 2015. Implementation of total quality management Case study: British Airways.
Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series V: Economic Sciences, 8(1).
O’Doherty, D., 2015. Missing Connexions: The politics of airport expansion in the United
Kingdom. Organization, 22(3), pp.418-431.
Shaw, S., 2016. Airline marketing and management. Routledge.

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Theguardian.com.2019. Available at:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/07/british-airways-it-glitch-causes-disruption-
for-passengers-delays
Wilkinson, P. and Jenkins, B., 2013. Aviation terrorism and security. Routledge.