howstaff
Member
Reading other comments here regarding a few things that may lead people to need to contact a customer service team (e.g. poor roadside or printed publicity / lost property / unclear ticket or booking policies / driver attitude complaints / service change complaints) I paused to think of who (if anyone) does customer service well, and honestly couldn't find a solid example of across-the-board good performance.
In a past role I had to deal with the escalated queries in my region for one of the big operator's customer service teams and quite frankly it was astounding quite how much they couldn't do. In that sense, I think I'm looking at the big groups for the worse level of customer service as for the most part they've attempted to do it in the cheapest way by centralising operations to people who don't know the local routes & areas, and have no means of getting the answers. While there's some logic to a centralised approach, none of the benefits (e.g. longer hours as it's more feasible to do shifts in 1 centralised team of 20 rather than 8 localised teams of 4) seem to have been realised aside from cost savings.
As information is ever more readily accessible through apps, websites and often RTI/RTPI displays, it's probably time for the whole industry to begin to question what their customer services team is there for, and how they should be doing it.
For me, opening hours and consistency is a key one. National Rail Enquiries covers the whole rail network and is open 24/7 aside from Christmas Day, whereas Traveline divisions usually look to open from 0700 until early evening and cover fairly unclear boundaries. In the age of BODS (and similar outside England!) it feels possible that a DfT managed enquiry centre could easily offer first level timetable and fare information 24/7, but with the back-up of "I can't find that location sorry, I can put you through to the regional team / operator" so that the customer can be passed in the correct direction without a whole rigmarole of finding the right number / team / person to address their query to.
Equally is geographical accessibility, for many face-to-face is best, and some things (such as returning a lost mobile phone) are far more challenging to do online! Somewhat tied with the opening hours bit, it's going to be quite off-putting for a customer to have to travel to an out-of-town bus depot to hope to find help, particularly if only available 9 to 5 - if you lose something and work weekdays then you may be struggling to get it back! Having a presence in a bus station, or on the streets of a town without a bus station, or the means to get printed materials or lost property to a remote customer are important in my opinion. We seem to have digital accessibility well sorted, but it does pose the question of have we gone too far that way and lost the geographical accessibility.
Finally, the big one is speed of answering. Data isn't perfect, and if your travel planning app gives you a bizarre looking result, or the disruption is shows is unclear, as a passenger you want to know quickly what this means for you. A 30 minute wait for a big operator or a series of "you're through to voicemail"s for smaller operators is probably off putting for many customers with alternative options. Equally (and this most certain applies across other industries too, utility companies I'm looking at you) there's surely no reason an email enquiry takes 7 days to respond to when a phone or live chat enquiry can be resolved in 7 minutes. Complex matters are different of course, but the targets for simple enquiries should be as short as can be expected to be achieved, and should be the same through every medium.
So that's what jumped out at me! Your turn now, considering what we traditionally call customer services like travel shops, call centres, on street representatives, etc... who gives good customer service, and what is it that they do well? What's being done well in one place that the whole industry could take note of?
In a past role I had to deal with the escalated queries in my region for one of the big operator's customer service teams and quite frankly it was astounding quite how much they couldn't do. In that sense, I think I'm looking at the big groups for the worse level of customer service as for the most part they've attempted to do it in the cheapest way by centralising operations to people who don't know the local routes & areas, and have no means of getting the answers. While there's some logic to a centralised approach, none of the benefits (e.g. longer hours as it's more feasible to do shifts in 1 centralised team of 20 rather than 8 localised teams of 4) seem to have been realised aside from cost savings.
As information is ever more readily accessible through apps, websites and often RTI/RTPI displays, it's probably time for the whole industry to begin to question what their customer services team is there for, and how they should be doing it.
For me, opening hours and consistency is a key one. National Rail Enquiries covers the whole rail network and is open 24/7 aside from Christmas Day, whereas Traveline divisions usually look to open from 0700 until early evening and cover fairly unclear boundaries. In the age of BODS (and similar outside England!) it feels possible that a DfT managed enquiry centre could easily offer first level timetable and fare information 24/7, but with the back-up of "I can't find that location sorry, I can put you through to the regional team / operator" so that the customer can be passed in the correct direction without a whole rigmarole of finding the right number / team / person to address their query to.
Equally is geographical accessibility, for many face-to-face is best, and some things (such as returning a lost mobile phone) are far more challenging to do online! Somewhat tied with the opening hours bit, it's going to be quite off-putting for a customer to have to travel to an out-of-town bus depot to hope to find help, particularly if only available 9 to 5 - if you lose something and work weekdays then you may be struggling to get it back! Having a presence in a bus station, or on the streets of a town without a bus station, or the means to get printed materials or lost property to a remote customer are important in my opinion. We seem to have digital accessibility well sorted, but it does pose the question of have we gone too far that way and lost the geographical accessibility.
Finally, the big one is speed of answering. Data isn't perfect, and if your travel planning app gives you a bizarre looking result, or the disruption is shows is unclear, as a passenger you want to know quickly what this means for you. A 30 minute wait for a big operator or a series of "you're through to voicemail"s for smaller operators is probably off putting for many customers with alternative options. Equally (and this most certain applies across other industries too, utility companies I'm looking at you) there's surely no reason an email enquiry takes 7 days to respond to when a phone or live chat enquiry can be resolved in 7 minutes. Complex matters are different of course, but the targets for simple enquiries should be as short as can be expected to be achieved, and should be the same through every medium.
So that's what jumped out at me! Your turn now, considering what we traditionally call customer services like travel shops, call centres, on street representatives, etc... who gives good customer service, and what is it that they do well? What's being done well in one place that the whole industry could take note of?
