Archive for the 'train' Category

A customer on my train spent 50 minutes this morning arguing with the guard. The guard’s credit card machine had taken his transaction twice according to the receipts. The guard “knew” it hadn’t because it made this error before.

The customer wanted confirmation that it hadn’t taken his money twice. The guard couldn’t do that but asked the customer to write in. Naturally the customer did not want to waste his time when it wasn’t his fault. Both were locked in an impasse.

The supervisor was called by phone. The conversation was not understood by the supervisor. Several times the customer asked the supervisor not to talk over him. He eventually told him (”Jim”) that he did not believe that Jim “understood what I’m saying” since he hadn’t listened to him.

My point isn’t better training for the ticket man or the supervisor. It’s two questions:

Why didn’t the machine get fixed when the conductor knew it was broken?

How much time was wasted and how much damage done to SouthEastern’s brand?

Uncategorized, complaint, customer experience, the best service is no service, train | No Comments

Yet again the 8.51 National Express from Peterborough to Kings Cross evades me. Not that I was late. The car park that is supposed to open to non-season ticket holders at 8.45, yet again fails to open until 8.50 as the train is making its way into the station with one of those ‘I’m on time’ smiles across the face of the driver (I imagine).

The story of the new car parking system is one that any regular will talk to you about. It’s a blog or ten in itself. I know it’s no use complaining about the whole system but decide to test the customer service response about the car park opening.“We’ve asked for a new part but been told we can’t have it” says the customer service representative on the station.

“We go out there every morning usually to reset the clock but you can’t do it before 8.30, and sometimes we forget” he continues.“Most times” I add. “To be fair, yes”, he says

“So when do you expect it to be replaced” I continue. “Not sure, as I say we not able to get the part” he repeats with a broad smile and friendly open hand guesture that says ‘love to but…not my problem’

So I leave with a sideswipe at the whole car parking system. “Rip the whole lot out while you’re at it” - which gets a hearty laugh of agreement. I walk away feeling I’ve lost the battle. (Is it a war?)

I use the next 35 minutes before the next train arrives to write this blog. I then use my 3G datacard to post it before getting on the train. Why is the on-train WiFi free? Because it never bloody works!I feel better…until tomorrow morning at 8.45.

National Express, accountability, feedback, train | No Comments

Why is it that when we try and fix problems we tend to forget it’s the little things that make a difference between good and bad customers experience. Monday last week was a case in point. I travel up from the South coast into London Victoria on a fairly frequent basis. The train I catch is the 6.57 that goes all the way and ours is the first (or last, depending how you look at it) stop on the line. Most mornings I’m usually to be found sat in my usual seat (predictable, I know) working away on the PC. Now all praise to Southern Rail, they have significantly improved services over the past few years with new carriages, more frequent services at peak times and they normally run on time. This Monday was different, a broken down train somewhere around Hayward’s Heath was causing utter chaos. I arrived at the station to see a train pulling out that should have gone ½ an hour before, so I knew I was in for some travel problems that day.  The digital indicator board was still saying my train was OK, although the ticket sales guy was muttering he did not know what was going on.  So, out onto the platform into a cold, misty and wet January morning. Just the type of day to really enjoy waiting for the train.As you can imagine not many passengers where too impressed. They became less and less impressed as the conflicting and confusing updates came over the tannoy and occasionally from the ticket office man. From the tannoy came the “we are sorry to say….” dutifully repeated every 10 minutes. Occasionally informing us that “The train for…” was delayed. From the ticket man a message informing us that “a broken down train is causing a blockage, not sure when it’s going to be cleared”. From the digital information board – 1^st train due, 2^nd train due, 3^rd train due. So everyone hung around, hoping for the best, as you do. My train, the 6.57, was kept on the digital indicator board, although others were clearly shown as cancelled. Even though the message came up delayed till 7.13, then delayed till 7.20, delayed till 7.25, delayed till 7.30 I still had hope, because the message was still there! Then it disappeared off the screen, no note of cancellation, just gone.At this point I became frustrated of Seaford and went to join the queue of people trying to get info from the poor ticket man. No hope there, so reclaimed my ticket cost (which took the poor man a considerable time although he must have got faster by the end of the morning with all the refunds he had to do, good practical training there!). So what caused all the confusion? All the elements were there. Good visual indicator boards, clear audio announcements, local presence in the ticket man.  But none of them told the same story (actually the ticket man was closest, and I should have listened to him). End result were deep rumblings of discontent the next day that could be heard from my, now thawed out, fellow commuters.All the good things that Southern and National rail have put in were forgotten, to be replaced by the most recent event now linked to every other time something had gone wrong.  Effective communications, always difficult, are even more important when things go wrong. If the man on the spot had been kept informed and in turn kept us informed, if he was able to ensure consistency of information over the tannoy and information boards, he could have potentially turned a negative situation into a positive one. 

Customers will put up with a lot when asked to, and trains break down. That’s part of life (well a commuters one anyway). It’s when people are confused or kept in the dark (and rain!) that it becomes a problem. And at that point people always remember the bad, not the good.

So come on Southern, get your communications plan in place and staff trained and supported in handling adverse situations. Then we can all focus on how well you have done, rather than on the occasional failure.

Uncategorized, dumb things, train | No Comments

As I sat on a train heading out of London Waterloo today I knew we were in for few problems with emergency engineering work on the line ahead and the departure boards looking decidedly void of useful information. Past the departure time the Guard announces that the train will not stop at 3 of the usual stations, including mine. As we hurry off the train clutching coats and laptops we meet the said Guard and naturally bombard him with questions. With a very uninterested look on his face he lifts his arms and answers “don’t know” to all the questions. “Go and ask someone” he says, pointing back to the harassed looking team on the station information desk.

You get the picture. Accountability is something we all need to take responsibility for. The customer experience we design, so carefully and at great cost, is not worth the investment of effort if it all falls apart when something goes wrong. When the areas of the business which cause the problems fail to learn from them, the frontline start to pass the blame. When the frontline pass the blame, the reputation of the whole organisation and trust of customers is damaged. In day to day operations, everyone needs to take a shared accountability for delivering the best customer experience whether things go right or wrong. But this will only happen if the business take accountability for fixing the root causes of problems.

accountability, customer experience, train | No Comments