British Airways “Help Me!” online portal – the one-stop shop when travel gets disrupted.
I am sure many of us have had a flight go wrong at some point and needed to sort ourselves out swiftly. Most airlines offer the choice of a complex navigation on their website to find the information you need, or get stuck in an hour call to customer services.
An interesting introduction to the BA experience was a new online portal for those wishing to manage their bookings in situations with some kind of disruption. The new portal to receive help is now located at ba.com/helpme, and quoting BA themselves, it should:
“…Assist customers with managing their bookings, re-booking, refunding or changing their flights, as well as linking travellers to the specific customer relations teams able to help them request special assistance, claim compensation, locate their bags or apply for reimbursement if they’ve paid extra to reserve special meals or seating.”
To clarify, these options actually already existed within the “Manage My Booking” tool but I believe this is the first time information related to travel disruption is clustered together in a nice landing page.
At first glance the portal seems clean and uncluttered, with easy to navigate links.
And finding the claim form for EC261 compensation for delays seems a lot easier too.
I would call this a welcome move because panicked travellers will probably need to know what to do, and if BA can get even a few people off their telephone lines when things go wrong then it can help free it up for those who really need it (e.g. blind or other special assistance passengers who would struggle to use websites efficiently)
As it happens I'm writing this while I am stuck in Madrid having missed a connecting flight due to a delayed inbound flight on BA's Spanish sibling. (I'll write about this in the next few days.) If this BA version works well I can foresee this being rolled out to Iberia in the near future. I just wish it could have been in time for now!
It’s a smart move by BA to set up this dedicated (helpme) web page. The bottom line, of course, will be the degree to which the page successfully helps travelers resolve their issues (the first time). But acknowledging the need is half the battle, so here’s hoping.
This is good only if BA responds. I have been trying to get a delayed/damaged luggage issue resolved since mid – October 2018. Forms, emails, phone calls…. What else? This doesn’t involve a large sum of money, everything has been documented. I need real ‘help’, not another fig leaf.