Will's Web Watch: Losing my Virginity

Will Sturgeon shares a lost luggage horror story - more proof that airlines (one in particular) must do more to take care of customers. Technology, used properly, could help.

When it comes to customer service a lot of companies have embraced the benefits offered by technology - from customer relationship management (CRM) systems in call centres to email helpdesks and online order/item tracking functionality.

But few companies in my experience have taken these advances and put them to such woeful misuse as Virgin Atlantic who I've had the gross misfortune to be dealing with for the past month following a business trip to San Francisco.

It was bad enough that my luggage turned up in London a week after I had - though I concede that could happen on any airline. But it was another thing altogether that items such as a mobile phone and some clothes had been removed from the luggage while in the care of Virgin.

Add to that the fact my digital camera was in pieces - although it travelled in a protective case - and it didn't exactly reflect glory onto Virgin Atlantic.

I know I'll not see the items again but I'm growing even less certain that I'll ever see suitable compensation - or even a timely reply - from the organisation.

Of course 'shit happens' but it's how a company then goes about recovering from such a situation that creates the lasting impression. And this is where Virgin Atlantic badly let me down.

The whole fiasco started about 30 minutes after touching down at Heathrow. We've probably all experienced that sinking feeling when you realise there are a lot of bags on the luggage carousel and yours isn't one of them. Often it turns up after a wait but after about 45 minutes it became clear to me I was one of the unlucky few.

"Oh yes Mr Sturgeon your luggage wasn't on the flight," said a member of Virgin ground crew who was holding a print out which listed all those passengers whose baggage hadn't made it. No explanation as to why not or why, when they already knew the luggage wasn't on board, they had let me stand around like a lost soul for the best part of an hour.

I was then given a claim number, a telephone number and an ominous sense of disappointment which would grow over the coming weeks.

My hopes were momentarily raised the next morning when I received a call from the company's Indian call centre, and there was a message left on my phone.

'I'm in luck,' I thought, so I called back.

Now the Virgin call centre is an exercise in patience - both before and after your call is actually connected.

I suspect I have now listened to the company's entire range of hold music - themed very carefully on destinations they fly to - so I got hits such as 'Australia' by the Manic Street Preachers, 'China Girl' by David Bowie, 'California Dreamin' by The Mamas and the Papas... you get the idea.

Worse was to come when my call was eventually connected.

"We do not know where your luggage is," I was told. "That call was just a courtesy call."

An interesting interpretation of courtesy.

I put in a second call to the call centre later the same day, having originally been told my luggage would be on the next flight out of San Francisco and would be with me within 24 hours. Given Virgin Atlantic must have had my luggage in order to know that it wasn't on the previous day's flight, I had no reason to doubt this.

"They are still looking for your luggage," I was told.

'How could they now have lost it?' I asked, explaining that I'd been assured it would be on the flight which had touched down that morning.

"I don't have that information in front of me," came the unhelpful reply from somebody who seemed to neither know nor care about my situation.

Frustrated by the hold music and unhelpful call centre staff I turned to email.

"We put customer service and commitment to our passengers at the heart of what we do," claimed the Virgin website. While that may not be a lie - though I do have my suspicions - I can certainly bear witness to the fact Virgin's claim on its site that it will reply to all emails within 48 hours is far from the truth.

The baggage services team - while largely incompetent in all of my dealings - were at least a little more honest claiming "a member of the team will endeavour to respond to you within 28 days".

That gem of uninspiring information formed the rest of an email which began: "This is an acknowledgement. Please do not reply to this email. Thank you for your email."

So I didn't really get the impression that my change in correspondence tactics had moved things along.

More phone calls, more waiting, more incompetence and a definite sense the right hand and the left didn't know what they were doing within Virgin ensued. On day four of this growing saga I was informed there is a time difference between London and San Francisco. I was well aware of this fact and - though they didn't tell me this - I am also aware there is an even greater time difference between San Francisco and India. But neither time difference is 72 hours, so this didn't really go any way to explain why they could not speak to anybody in San Francisco, or why the teams either side of the Atlantic were not party to the same information.

CRM systems and the data which is created and collected throughout the process of checking in and subsequently reporting items lost should be joined up and staff should be capable of giving the impression that they know what they are doing.

Eventually, after a week, my luggage turned up complete with an Air Mexicana sticker and minus several valuable items. If it could talk I'm sure my bag could have spun me quite a yarn about the travels it had been on.

Since then there has been more of the same - emails and pointless phone calls to Virgin Atlantic. Now I am largely resigned to this issue going unresolved as I seem to have come up against an immovable barrier of incompetence and misunderstanding and a palpable sense that Virgin Atlantic really couldn't care less - either about the fact a customer has lost items while luggage was in their care, or that the company is destroying customer relationships with mismanagement and poor online and offline assistance.

It seems very telling to me that Virgin will sell me a box of wine and at all stages of the process I can track online where that delivery is. And yet when it comes to luggage - which, compared to the wine, has a far higher value to me and a far lower inherent value to them - such a function is not offered.

A number of airlines - such as British Airways - are now looking at RFID as a way of tracking luggage, which should ensure fewer instances of wrongly directed luggage as well as enabling them to reunite customers with their luggage more quickly.

Other airlines are looking at ways of enabling customers to track lost luggage in the same way they would track a FedEx shipment online. This seems an encouraging development, even if the airlines may consider the introduction of such a system to be admission that problems do occur. (Interestingly Virgin Atlantic does not disclose the amount of luggage it loses, according to this Cheap Flights report.).

The use of technology should improve matters but it can only be successful if used well and used by people who are able to do their jobs effectively. We've had email for some time now and I would argue that it is never acceptable for a company to "endeavour to respond" to an email within 28 days.

Today I read that Virgin Atlantic reported a doubling of profits to £41m for the past year - boosted largely by business travellers. Perhaps the company would do well to invest some of that money in ensuring those business travellers get their luggage back.