Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

Let the train take the strain….

Posted by: Ian Morton | 7.02.2008

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

The product vs the service 7 - the postscript

Posted by: Peter Massey | 23.01.2008

Blogging now resumed as we switch to a new site and a lot has happened in 3 weeks! The urge to buy a car overcame me and I bought a Land Rover Defender last week - a diesel of course. So cute. And practical where I live out in the country - yes it has real mud from a real field. And with so many advocates locally that I ended up testing one.

The 911 is up for sale ( call me if you want to benefit from the low low price I can get from a dealer! ) and a Mini Cooper S beckons next if it goes. If it doesn’t fetch a proper price then I won’t be sad to keep it. Just unlikely to upgrade based on depreciation. But that’s not really fair - I’ve suffered far worse with other cars eg an Audi A8 that lost 28k in 12 months!

So from passionate advocate to neutral seller? Not really - still a mad fan as I have the 22 year old one to fall back on. But no longer an advocate. Ultimately the service experience has been very good, the product is brilliant. But the sales experience has resulted in the opposite result from that desired. Emotions are funny things but ignore them at your peril !

Now the Land Rover and the Mini buying experiences…. I’ll save that for tomorrow

Porsche, Uncategorized, customer experience | No Comments