Improving Northern's Customer Service

[IanD]

If you don't think Northern's Customer service is up to much, here's your chance to do something about it. Or probably not.

This email came from Northern about half an hour ago:

Do you have ideas for improving customer service at Northern?

We know providing a great customer experience is about the support you receive from the moment you search for a ticket to the moment you reach your end destination. You can see what our customers and people think makes great customer service here.

We are inviting you to work together with us to shape our Customer Service Promises and the training we provide our employees. You can read more about our plans here.

We want to hear your views on what great customer service means to you by letting us know if you’d like to attend one of our regional workshops in the New Year. From these workshops, as well as hearing your views and explaining our plans, we’ll create a Digital Customer Forum and a Customer Panel in 2017 so that you can stay in touch with us, providing feedback and insight throughout our modernisation programme. It’s an exciting time!

You can sign up here.

The four workshops will be held in early 2017 in Leeds, Manchester, Preston and Newcastle.

We will be in touch in the New Year with more details about the workshops, including exactly when and where they will be held, to see if you are able to join us.

Let’s deliver a service that makes you Proud to be Northern.

 

[swt class 450]

If you don't think Northern's Customer service is not up to much, here's your chance to do something about it. Or probably not.

This email came from Northern about half an hour ago:

The first thing they should do is start providing their own customer service rather than outsourcing it to Carillion.

 

[Merseysider]

Yeah, I got that email too. As above, lose Carillion. I'd like to think that they'll have replied to my delay repay emails which I sent in August by the time these workshops come around, but I'm not counting on it.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The first thing they should do is start providing their own customer service rather than outsourcing it to Carillion.

Agreed to some extent.

FWIW, to me, the marks of good customer service are, in no particular order:-

1. No use of standard replies. In 2016 I am already capable of reading the company's website for standard, clearly presented information, as are most others. To think otherwise is patronising, and it is very poor customer service indeed to patronise customers.

2. Customer services department must feed into, and be taken seriously by, the rest of the business, so when issues are reported that do require a change to business processes, these are fed into the appropriate management and not lost.

3. A proper ticketing system so the progress of a complaint or other issue can be tracked at all times, ideally self-service, and a customer can easily update onto their "support ticket" without needing to call in or needing intervention.

4. Prompt response to any communication, even if to explain a realistic timescale for investigation. If any timescale is missed, an update on the new timescale to be provided.

5. Proper prioritisation of communication. If someone needs to make contact about a priority issue e.g. a PIS failure that needs fixing now, there needs to be a way for that to be resolved quickly. At present the only way to get that kind of issue addressed is Twitter, and then only by some TOCs depending how they use it. For instance, I reported the timetable posters being the wrong way round (on the wrong platforms) at Longbridge to LM this week - it's no good if something like that isn't resolved for months because it's stuck in the queue behind Delay Repay claims which can, realistically, be treated as low priority.

6. Where a question is asked back to the customer, their reply should not be re-added to the queue. Once the discussion has started, the work-in-progress tickets should be afforded priority over those not started yet (within the framework of general prioritisation).

7. The solution should not be low-cost alone - it should recognise the importance of good customer communication to a business's success.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
FWIW, solve all the above and I would be happy to see the total abolition of Delay Repay.

 

[takno]

Agreed to some extent.
1. No use of standard replies. In 2016 I am already capable of reading the company's website for standard, clearly presented information, as are most others. To think otherwise is patronising, and it is very poor customer service indeed to patronise customers.

Have you ever worked in customer service? 95% of the queries can absolutely be dealt with through standard responses because whether or not most people are capable of reading (and presumably understanding) information on the website, they won't have done.

 

[sheff1]

Have you ever worked in customer service? 95% of the queries can absolutely be dealt with through standard responses because whether or not most people are capable of reading (and presumably understanding) information on the website, they won't have done.

Some of today's customer service operatives seem to have been told to include a minimum number of standard sentences/paragraphs regardless of whether they are relevant or not. Remarkably, some of the standard responses are not even grammatically correct and seem to have been written and/or approved by people who do not have English as their first language.

>>>>>>

Going back to the OP, if there was an event in Sheffield I would certainly have put my name down. I might still do so as I could get to Leeds easily enough as long as they pay for my travel (which, I note, they do not mention).

 

[IanD]

Going back to the OP, if there was an event in Sheffield I would certainly have put my name down. I might still do so as I could get to Leeds easily enough as long as they pay for my travel (which, I note, they do not mention.

Unfortunately, there all too far away for me.

To be honest, I've not had a bad experience with Northern customer services largely down to the fact that I've never had to contact them

 

[sheff1]

To be honest, I've not had a bad experience with Northern customer services largely down to the fact that I've never had to contact them

. I have no idea who it was I got through to when I used a 'Customer Help Point' at a station, but whoever it was spoke limited English and understood even less. They were as much use as a chocolate fireguard. When I wrote in afterwards, the reply did not answer the question.

 

[causton]

. I have no idea who it was I got through to when I used a 'Customer Help Point' at a station, but whoever it was spoke limited English and understood even less. They were as much use as a chocolate fireguard. When I wrote in afterwards, the reply did not answer the question.

This isn't you, is it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZygEun1Hmc&ab_channel=nathanatherton

(shush, I know it is Merseyrail and not Northern!)

 

[sheff1]

Not that dissimilar

 

[glbotu]

. I have no idea who it was I got through to when I used a 'Customer Help Point' at a station, but whoever it was spoke limited English and understood even less. They were as much use as a chocolate fireguard. When I wrote in afterwards, the reply did not answer the question.

I remember once actually telephoning National Rail Enquiries (I was at a station with very limited phone signal) and they

1. Were barely intelligible.
2. Couldn't actually tell me anything beyond the timetable,

therefore being actively worse than their own website........

 

[Bletchleyite]

Have you ever worked in customer service? 95% of the queries can absolutely be dealt with through standard responses because whether or not most people are capable of reading (and presumably understanding) information on the website, they won't have done.

However it is a gross insult to customers raising genuine queries who have read the website to be bounced back and forth.

OK, to rephrase, standard responses have their uses *but* the approach should not be "how can we use one to get rid of another ticket off the queue". Nothing says "we don't give a stuff" like a standard response to a non-standard query. Little makes me more likely to be unreasonable as a customer. (I've noted before that my approach to claiming Delay Repay has nothing to do with the cause of the original incident and everything to do with how it is handled, and I claimed a few hundred quid off VT after the flooding issues last year precisely because of appalling handling of passengers which I would otherwise probably not have claimed, none of which were to my actual personal benefit as I used them for work trips as work had paid for the tickets and they, not I, had lost time from the incidents).
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I remember once actually telephoning National Rail Enquiries (I was at a station with very limited phone signal) and they

1. Were barely intelligible.
2. Couldn't actually tell me anything beyond the timetable,

therefore being actively worse than their own website........

In my experience it was a case of phoning 3 times and seeing if two of the answers agreed.

 

[northwichcat]

Have you ever worked in customer service? 95% of the queries can absolutely be dealt with through standard responses because whether or not most people are capable of reading (and presumably understanding) information on the website, they won't have done.

Even if that is the case it's good customer service to tailor the response to the question. For instance, if someone asks whether Wilmslow to Bolton is covered by the evening peak restrictions don't just send them a copy of the information here: https://www.northernrailway.co.uk/tickets/28-off-peak Explain the specific restrictions for Wilmslow and say that Bolton isn't included in the restrictions then give them the link to the website for further information.

I've worked for businesses where the people who phone up or email with a stupid question usually work for a client who have a big contract with the business and if you treat them the way some TOC customer service departments treat passengers you would expect to find yourself explaining your actions to a company director. As an example of someone phoning up because they've forgotten their password when there is a reset your password link under the login box on the website. In an instance like that we would be expected to reset their password and then inform them if they forget it again there's a reset your password link.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I remember once actually telephoning National Rail Enquiries (I was at a station with very limited phone signal) and they

1. Were barely intelligible.
2. Couldn't actually tell me anything beyond the timetable,

therefore being actively worse than their own website........

I remember on one occasion overhearing a conversion between a passenger and a ticket clerk. The passenger seemed confused and said saying NRE told me but the ticket clerk stopped him and said don't listen to what they say and if you have any queries ask station staff not them.

 

[takno]

Some of today's customer service operatives seem to have been told to include a minimum number of standard sentences/paragraphs regardless of whether they are relevant or not. Remarkably, some of the standard responses are not even grammatically correct and seem to have been written and/or approved by people who do not have English as their first language.

Agreed the availability of pre-prepared paragraphs shouldn't be a reason to deskill the role or assign it to people who lack the English to understand the questions or prepared responses. You also can't use a response if you don't yourself understand how the response answers the question. This is why outsourcing the operation tends to be a non-starter. Even in-house it's surprising how often the prepared responses have been written by too quickly and not reviewed. I once spent a fairly horrific weekend going through everything our internal CS team was sending out as prepared statements tidying up obvious errors, but the conclusion I came to was that using those prepared statements was probably going to result in more comprehensible and accurate responses than writing answers ad-hoc.

 

[Bletchleyite]

In an instance like that we would be expected to reset their password and then inform them if they forget it again there's a reset your password link.

And it's quite possible that there's another reason. I work mostly remotely. I have worked in companies where the way to do an electronic password reset is to do so on a colleague's computer with their agreement via an online portal (as you can't log into your own). I can't do that as I don't work where my colleagues are located. So my time would be wasted by receiving a standard response.

An additional dislike: companies who respond to all complaints made by modes other than phone saying "phone us". No. That's wasting my time. If you only wish to deal with complaints by phone, only publish the phone as an option - but even then, it's 2016, and that approach is utterly archaic.

 

[northwichcat]

And it's quite possible that there's another reason. I work mostly remotely. I have worked in companies where the way to do an electronic password reset is to do so on a colleague's computer with their agreement via an online portal (as you can't log into your own). I can't do that as I don't work where my colleagues are located. So my time would be wasted by receiving a standard response.

With the system I was referring to it's on a webpage which works from any computer. However, there could be reasons why it wouldn't work e.g. someone using a very old browser or having a feature in their browser disabled when it should be enabled.

 

[breadfan]

Northern have sent out emails looking to customers to go on one of 5 workshops to get feedback on what makes a good customer experience. Or something.

https://www.northernrailway.co.uk/corporate/wearelistening

Our customers want and expect more from the service we deliver. We want to provide help when you need it, offer a personalised service and be a company that is easy to do business with.
We know providing a great customer experience is about the support you receive from the moment you search for a ticket to the moment you reach your end destination.
To help us achieve this, we are inviting customers to work together with us to shape our Customer Service Promises and the training we provide our employees. Read more about our plans here.
We want to hear your views on what great customer service means to you by attending one of our regional workshops in the New Year. From these workshops, as well as hearing your views and explaining our plans, we will create a
Digital Customer Forum and a Customer Panel in 2017 so that our customers can stay in touch with us, providing feedback and insight throughout our modernisation programme.

Has anything like this been done before by Northern or any other TOCs? Will it be worth the bother of signing up and attending?

 

[STANDISH]

I have undertaken workshops with Greater Manchester Transport. It was worth effort to attend the workshops, because of the ideas and suggestions you could put forward to GMT.

 

[northwichcat]

Their agency staff handling the Twitter feed yesterday proved to be rather useless. They seemed to reply to every tweet in the order they came in, so finished up replying to tweets 2-3 hours after they were tweeted and in many cases all the responses were along the lines of "Sorry for the inconvenience" or "Trains are now running again on that route." They didn't bother tweeting most of the cancelled services or the amended services which probably is why they got so many tweets to respond to.

 

[hairyhandedfool]

The "Social Media Team" are not agency staff. To be fair, if they didn't respond to some of the tweets they'd probably get accused of ignoring people, even if they do tweet out the information actually needed. That said, better tweets might have been something along the lines of "we are extremely busy today, for train running information please keep checking the live departure boards on [link to website] as these are updated regularly".

 

[ainsworth74]

I went along to the Leeds focus group this week. I thought it was a very positive and enjoyable evening. The Northern management that were there definitely seemed to acknowledge and understand that their current customer service offer leaves a lot to be desired.

One of them made an interesting comment to the effect that they had underestimated the demand that would be placed on their Customer 'Experience' Centre and were taking steps to rectify that.

I would also so that there is definitely a feeling that whilst their new trains, services, stations, etc are a key part of their move to modernise and improve their offer to passengers there is a real sense that a lot of that will be a bit wasted without also massively improving their customer service.

I think we're in watch this space territory. They were making all the right noises on the night (both in terms of their plans and their response to our feedback/thoughts) but the proof will be in the implementation. It's too early to say, I think, whether this is just a box ticking exercise or not.

Certainly don't feel like I wasted my evening by any stretch and neither did any of the other attendees that I spoke with!

 

[northwichcat]

The "Social Media Team" are not agency staff. To be fair, if they didn't respond to some of the tweets they'd probably get accused of ignoring people, even if they do tweet out the information actually needed. That said, better tweets might have been something along the lines of "we are extremely busy today, for train running information please keep checking the live departure boards on [link to website] as these are updated regularly".

One of the problems was they told people to keep checking their journey check site, which didn't mention a lot of the services that didn't show up. On NRE they appeared as 'delayed' and then just disappeared opposed to being shown as cancelled or as still coming but with a significant delay. What passengers really needed is someone to tell them what's going on with the services which were just disappearing off the automated service, having not turned up.

 

[marcouk2]

I went along to the Leeds focus group this week. I thought it was a very positive and enjoyable evening. The Northern management that were there definitely seemed to acknowledge and understand that their current customer service offer leaves a lot to be desired.

One of them made an interesting comment to the effect that they had underestimated the demand that would be placed on their Customer 'Experience' Centre and were taking steps to rectify that.

I would also so that there is definitely a feeling that whilst their new trains, services, stations, etc are a key part of their move to modernise and improve their offer to passengers there is a real sense that a lot of that will be a bit wasted without also massively improving their customer service.

I think we're in watch this space territory. They were making all the right noises on the night (both in terms of their plans and their response to our feedback/thoughts) but the proof will be in the implementation. It's too early to say, I think, whether this is just a box ticking exercise or not.

Certainly don't feel like I wasted my evening by any stretch and neither did any of the other attendees that I spoke with!

Ditto for the Manchester one I attended, certainly seemed to have big plans for how to improve the service but one telling comment was about how they had various plans given to them when they started the franchise and it's taken them a while to actually work out how it will be put into practice so definitely still a work in progress.

 

[yorksrob]

Aside from the interminable delay in delay repay, my biggest regular headache with Northern (after capacity issues) is poor timetabling. Unless they get the basics right with connections, customer service is very much fiddling with the deck chairs while Rome burns.

 

[1D53]

Their agency staff handling the Twitter feed yesterday proved to be rather useless. They seemed to reply to every tweet in the order they came in, so finished up replying to tweets 2-3 hours after they were tweeted and in many cases all the responses were along the lines of "Sorry for the inconvenience" or "Trains are now running again on that route." They didn't bother tweeting most of the cancelled services or the amended services which probably is why they got so many tweets to respond to.

Social Media is probably a small team of one or two people. They looked to get sent way over 2000 tweets within about 12 hours. I'm not sure what you expected them to do? Reply to everything with in depth answers inside 30 seconds?

 

[Moonshot]

Aside from the interminable delay in delay repay, my biggest regular headache with Northern (after capacity issues) is poor timetabling. Unless they get the basics right with connections, customer service is very much fiddling with the deck chairs while Rome burns.

Any examples of poor timetabling ?

 

[northwichcat]

Social Media is probably a small team of one or two people. They looked to get sent way over 2000 tweets within about 12 hours. I'm not sure what you expected them to do? Reply to everything with in depth answers inside 30 seconds?

I'm not sure what the value is of having people just repeating what information is already available on the Journey Check site to numerous different people. However, if they identify the tweets which aren't answered by information available on Journey Check and try and find the answers to those then they are adding value.

I also would have thought they would ask employees if they are able to do some overtime when they are extremely busy, especially as it's a role which can be done remotely.

 

[Bletchleyite]

FWIW, I think the best way to do Twitter well is to have the team either located in, or very closely connected to, the TOC Control.

 

[yorksrob]

Any examples of poor timetabling ?

My personal ones:

Connections of the late trains from the Settle Carlisle and Hull lines into the last Hallam line train out of Leeds, arriving a few minutes before and after that train leaves.

The Cumbrian coast line train which gets into Carlisle within the minute the last Carlisle - Leeds train leaves, making travel from Cumbria to Yorkshire difficult.

The Manchester Vic - Huddersfield which is timed to get in five minutes after the last Wakefield connection has left, meaning that I have to further crowd the already overcrowded last train from Leeds.

Probably others but those ones affect me in particular.

 

[hairyhandedfool]

....I also would have thought they would ask employees if they are able to do some overtime when they are extremely busy, especially as it's a role which can be done remotely.

I can think of a number of reasons it might be opposed, but for the company I think the biggest one is that they would be worried about the risks it poses. Potentially it's a lot of staff with unrestricted access to the company twitter account, officially or otherwise, at any time.