One of the few things that probably the majority of ticket office clerks would use The Manual for was straightforward access to previous NFMs. We need the previous year's fares to calculate some refunds and changeovers. The removal of this facility has certainly been causing headaches for some of us on the front line. The PDF files that have been provided are very user unfriendly to work with - I've seen clerks try to work with them, before giving up and ringing other ticket offices for help. On some occasions, I've resorted to using my laptop and previous versions of Avantix Traveller to find the fare. I don't understand why something that was actually required by ticket office staff had to be taken away.
The search function within the iKb is poor - I've given up with it as I kept typing in keywords and getting either no results, or the page I was looking for being nowhere near the top of the list.
Where has the Newsrail Express gone?
I could go on, but it is actually annoying to me - I pride myself on giving the very best customer service possible. I regularly used The Manual to search for things that I needed to find out about quickly. Because of the way the iKb manifests itself, now I've found there are occasions where I've had to do the dreaded thing and tell a customer to come back another time, because I need more time to find the relevant information to provide the service they are entitled to receive.
It's fair to say that in some ways, the switch from The Manual to the iKb has contributed to the degradation of the level of service offered to customers.
