Yesterday I decided to book a flight. Into my mailbox had winged a couple of e-mails about airline sales. I had to fly on business so I looked at them, decided they weren’t good value (as is often the case) and starting booking a return on bmi to Belfast. With no sale they were still cheaper.
Half way through I decided to alter my flight times so I went back and started to amend the booking. By this time I had got as far as filling in a name and a mobile number so that I could be informed of any changes to the flight, a common enough feature of most booking websites these days.
What happened next I did not expect. Within seconds, and I mean seconds, and before I had changed much I had a phone call on my mobile from, I suppose, a bmi call centre. They rang to say that they had noticed I hadn’t completed the booking which might be due to a technical reason and rang to see if they could help me.
Is this call a passenger benefit because some websites can be difficult to weave through especially if you are not a regular flyer and this is good customer service? Or is it a sign that airlines are desperate to get every booking they can? Or is it a sign that even though I haven’t “sent” the information through as a booking, the airline can still see what I am doing?
What do you think?
image courtesy of bmi
