She exudes confidence and can hold her audience spellbound when talking about her company. She is Folakemi Ani-Mumuney, Marketing Manager British Airways, West Africa. In this interview with Jimoh Babatunde, she talks about how British Airways has become synonymous with a certain core values.

Can we meet you? My name is Folakemi Ani-Mumuney, Marketing Manager, British Airways, West Africa. I am responsible for the brand and between the brand British Airways we have become synonymous with a certain core values. Values around professionalism, responsiveness and we are particularly known for being pioneering, for being innovative, for being at the forefront of quality and service for the customers.

The key area I want to talk on today is around innovation and how we are technology driven company. We use a lot of solution around technology to give our customers the kind of service they want.
Why did you do that ?

We are trying to bring different things back to the customers. We are trying to give the customers back time. What we find is that with the type of solutions we have put in place are things that the customers have asked for . We ask why can’t we do it this way, we would like to do it this way. British airways tends to respond to all of that. Over the last few years. I will give you a few example, lets take the e-ticket. The e-ticket is a paperless form of travel. Basically, it is when you booked your ticket in our reservation system, you don’t really need anything from us again other than you turn up at the airport with your passport and you can fly.

When we first introduced this people said it would not work that people need to see their ticket. But we are pleased to say to you now that IATA have even mandated that by 2007 all airlines must move to e-ticketing.
What are the benefits to our customers?

Security. In the past if a customer lost his ticket say when he is already on holiday in New York, he got mobbed and lost his ticket, imagined the hassle he has to go through to be able to either get a re-issue, but for a customer with e-ticket, nothing stops his holiday because his ticket is secured in the British Airways reservation system. All he has to do is turn up at the airport and he can still travel.

So, we pioneered it again, but it is an investment and effort we believe in that we need to continue to invest in this industry. We all know what the airline industry is like. We don’t stop there. That is globally.

Here in Nigeria, we pioneered the pay off line option. Which means we partnered with a local bank, the Guarantee Trust Bank. In partnering with them we were bringing ease, convenience, safety, security to our customers. In fact the marketing campaign was tagged ease campaign.

Basically, what it is, is that a customer needs not leave the comfort of his home or office to transact business with British Airways. You pick up a phone, you call us and you make your booking. Or you can send an email request to us or you visit our web site there you do all your booking yourself in the comfort of your home. All you need then do is to transfer and pay your money to GTB bank. So you could walk in to any Guarantee Trust Bank and pay for British Airways ticket.

Think of what that means to a customer who stays in Maiduguri or is based in the hinterland. Such a customer does not need to travel first to Abuja or Lagos to do business with us and then travel back again and then travel back on the day of the actual trip to the airport. So we are saving them a lot of hassle, the security risk has been removed by partnering with the bank.

In addition, it means our distribution chain , the network , the opportunities for you to interact with BA are a lot more, because if this bank has branches all over the country, it means we are there. So we are a lot more responsive as a result of that.

I talked about our core values before, professionalism, responsiveness, this is evidence of one the core values.

And how did you come about this? We just called our core travellers in a room and we asked them what do you want?. British Airways is very good at doing that. We do that with our products, we do that with our services, we do that with our systems using technology.

But the biggest, what I will call the sub brand, that is the basket that holds all of these and make all of these possible is our web site- ba.com.

It is more than just a web site. Most people have web sites you go for information, but ours is not like that as it is a transactional web site. It is a booking engine, it is linked into our booking engine, so you can get real time information on booking, real time availability on a booking, you can get real time fares on all the various destinations we travel to world wide. You can imagine how powerful such an engine is, because the permutations are there.

What it does is that if you logged on to www.ba.com, if you want to make a booking you can put in there your date, it will show you the fare for those days and you could also looked at dates ahead so that you can pick the convenient day to travel. You can also see the price differential, let say if the fare is better on a particular day, you can choose that day. So we have really made it as interactive as we can and we will continue to improve on ba.com

The web site is divided into three sections. The first section is where I talked about the booking. Under that basically is what we call Manage My Booking. What it does is that you can actually make your booking on there and you can actually go ahead to make changes to your booking.

Everything that has to do with managing your reservation, be it destination, be it booking you keep going back in there to do it yourself. This is what I mean by giving you back time. You don’t need to travel all the way down here with all the traffic we have in V/Island, stay where you are and you can keep changing the reservation how ever many times you want to change within the rules of a particular cabin or class of ticket you are buying.

You have been planning your trip. Again in this, we have all sorts of value added that we put under one portal for you. So it could be that you want an hotel, we have a product called BA holidays. Within this we have hotels, we have car hire, we have areas of interest. Places you can visit. We got all of that under one umbrella. So it is one stop shop for all your travel needs.

The last portal is called about My Journey. This talked about all the different things you might need, so you want to visit America for example and you know America requires you to capture certain data, we have loaded that under this portal and you can do all of that within that same web site.

The data America requires you to capture is called passengers information. So what we have done is that rather than you getting to the airport and being in a long queue waiting to capture this information , do it before you get to the airport saving yourself time. You can see that the theme running through all of these is about giving you back time.

Then the information of your destination, if you want to go to China, we have got information about China there for you. What are the travel requirement, what do you need around your journey. All are the things around there.

We also have a fresh section which I will call After Your Trip. So you are planning your trip, you are managing your trip and what is the support after your trip?. The support after your trip has to do with things like baggage. So in an event something goes wrong and things would sometime go wrong. British Airways is responsive enough and professional enough to address that as well by giving you a tool that helps you to manage it in the way that means you are comfortable and confident in the knowledge that even though you have not received your baggage yet, it is on it is on its way.

The section I have tagged After your journey also include our frequent flyer program. Basically, what this means is that if you fly British Airways inevitably you are entitled to become a member of the executive club with certain terms and conditions applying. But everybody who flies BA ought to be joining our executive club because there are so many features and benefits involved in being a member.

If you are a member chances are that you can use the lough, if there is a wait list you are looked after in a special way different from others. And most importantly, you can earn miles. So, for example, you earn miles which then allow you to redeem for a free ticket to say Paris for example. You can treat your love ones with the miles that you earn. Much as you are buying tickets from us, we are still giving something back for your patronage and you can manage all of that using the third element of ba.com.

This brings me to the most exciting product, the on-line check in. This product was pioneered by BA. With this product, do you know that you can actually check in on-line and what this means is that you visit ba.com when you have bought your ticket and is now 24hours to your flight.

You can go in there and you see an interactive seat plan and basically you choose which seat you want and you check yourself in. So turn up at the airport when you are ready to fly, with the luggage you moved to the fast bag drop to drop your bag and you go straight to the aircraft and if you don’t have luggage it becomes easier still. I think that is an amazing product which I believe will revolutionize travels.

When we talk of giving you back time what more. In Nigeria for example, in Lagos particularly, what people do is to go to the airport to check-in earlier on in the day and then go back home and then go back to the airport to board. Now there is no need for that as we are giving you more time with this product. All you need to do is to look for a PC with internet connectivity and log on to ba.com and you will be checked in.

Mark my word, just as with e-ticket we started, am sure as time goes on you will see all the other airlines jumping on the bandwagon of this on-line check-in. We have invested heavily in it to give our customers this particular benefit. In British Airways, we believe in benefits to the customers as this is the reason for our existence. That is why we are doing what we are doing.

On the airline’s new uniform. We are particularly happy about our new uniforms. We don’t rest on our laurels, when we introduced our last set of uniforms which we just retired people said whao!. But we believed that as we have evolved, as our brand has evolved and as our services have evolved so also attention to details like the uniforms our staff wear , the presentation of who we are at British Airways, we pay attention to that detail as well.

This new set of uniforms, and of course, as with British Airways which is always about quality we went to the very best Julien MacDonald. He is currently an icon in the UK and world wide. Recently at the London fashion week, he was the most celebrated of the designers. And he designed the British Airways uniform. Most companies will think about uniform, but it will be the last thing they will invest in, but not us.

So, we went to the very best and it took him a while, he sat down, he looked into what it should be, what a uniform should be that capture everything you want to say about the British Airways and most importantly that allows for service. And he kept to BA. tradition. He added flare to it as well as style and our customers have said once they see somebody wearing the uniform that person will attend to all their needs. So, it conveys professionalism .

At the same time they don’t think it is stuffy in that British way, it is stylish as opposed to being stuffy. There also tiny details that you will never notice and for a designer of his caliber to have designed the tabard and the alternative wear for our pregnant staff is wonderful..

That is British Airways for you. The attention we pay to details in every bits of service we give to our customers translate into the uniform as well. Just as we have done with technology, just as we have done with new products, just as we have done with ba.com , so we have done with the uniform as well.

Our products speak volumes in terms of the brand itself. What am saying is that British Airways believes in consistency, so much as we have this uniform designed by this UK icon it is not limited to the UK only. In this market and as with every market. Every single product that BA. has in one market is rolled out across the globe in every single market we are operating. That is quality, that is quality airline.

Source: Vanguard