Getting replies to complaints that don't address the issue

[TUC]

Several weeks ago my daughter travelled first class with East Coast from Grantham to Leeds on a Saturday evening. Given the time of day and it being a weekend, it was no surprise that the complementary meals were not on offer but what disappointed my daughter was that she was not even offered a tea or coffee. Indeed, apart from someone collecting up dirty cups after she go on, no staff appeared for the whole of the journey.

I emailed East Coast saying that the complementary food was not expected but that, given it was a journey of over an hour, and there were catering staff were clearly on the train (As evidenced by the dirty cup collection) surely refreshments should have been offered and surely some staff should have put in an appearance.

I got what was clearly a standard reply from East Coast advising 'I am unable to offer any compensation' (I hadn't asked for any!) 'as the first class catering is indeed complementary and subject to availability'. It then went on to talk about that sometimes unexpected disruptions to the rail system can result in fresh supplies not being delivered, which was odd because there were no delays and there clearly had been supplies on the train!

I replied saying that I had already acknowledged that the complementary catering service is not available on all trains and that my complaint had been about why no staff had attended to first class during that extended period. I got a reply saying 'I can only reiterate what my colleague had advised and can assure you that this would now have been reviewed'. Just what the 'this' was referring to I was left to guess! It went onto say 'I can fully understand the discomfort she felt' (I hadn't referred to any discomfort! ).

I wasn't after a refund. I wasn't looking for anything world changing. I certainly wasn't looking for two responses that were full of irrelevant stock phrases. I was just looking for someone to have actually read what I said and simply say 'Sorry, that should not have happened'. East Coast (and other TOCs who are just as likely to behave in the same way), Is that too much to ask?

 

[SemaphoreSam]

Obviously, the answer is..."Yes".

 

[richw]

I had a similar experience with FGW not addressing my concerns and sending what was clearly cut and pasted paragraphs that were impersonal and didn't address my concerns.
I wasn't bothered about getting anything I just wanted to ensure other passengers didn't get my experience.

The response received was so poorly cut and pasted it irritated me more, so I emailed the MD.

For First operated TOCs, find the name of the person, put a dot between first and last name, and then its @Firstgroup.com.
I imagine should be relatively easy to find an email address for someone important at East Coast to CC in. Once the complaint team knows you have cc'd the boss you will soon see things answered correctly.

 

[Agent_c]

You can blame this on consultants convincing customer facing companies to spend millions on their dodgy advice that customers want "empathy", rather than answers.

 

[richw]

You can blame this on consultants convincing customer facing companies to spend millions on their dodgy advice that customers want "empathy", rather than answers.

empathy annoys customers more I find. I am trained to use it, and customers want to know what happened, why, how, and how will I fix it.

 

[table38]

Over 20 years ago I helped support some software for a well-known chocolate manufacturer that dealt with customer complaints by composing a letter from stock phrases.

I would imagine that time has moved on, and there is now software to automatically read an email, detect key words and phrases, and send an automatic reply.

(Or if there isn't, I shall write a program and make some cash )

 

[DaveNewcastle]

Thank you for posting on RailForums.co.uk

I was very dissapointed to hear of your unfortunate experience after making a complaint to East Coast. I have imagined a set of very high standards for East Coast to achieve, and clearly they have failed to meet those standards.

Here are an irrelevant couple of paragraphs which I wrote earlier and which I use every day in hundreds of letters to people complaining about something or other and which I don't read.

Blah blah blah sorry blah.

Blah blah take customer feedback very seriously blah blah.

Blah thank you blah vouchers blah next time blah.

. . . . . Once the complaint team knows you have cc'd the boss you will soon see things answered correctly.

Possibly, but before you do, be absolutely clear about the outcome you are seeking, and/or the issues that are up for negotiation.

 

[pdeaves]

For First operated TOCs, find the name of the person, put a dot between first and last name, and then its @Firstgroup.com.

... except for the ones that aren't (in cases where there are multiple common first name/common surname combinations e.g.'John Smith').

Just advising caution before getting carried away!

 

[DelayRepay]

Over 20 years ago I helped support some software for a well-known chocolate manufacturer that dealt with customer complaints by composing a letter from stock phrases.

I used to use similar software. The only time I had to step in and write a letter myself were if they were a seiral moaner and had already used up our entire supply of pre-written letters, or if they wrote to the CEO

I would imagine that time has moved on, and there is now software to automatically read an email, detect key words and phrases, and send an automatic reply.

(Or if there isn't, I shall write a program and make some cash )

Already exists - we have a system that automatically replies to customer emails. All the staff member has to do is read and release the reply, or add in/edit it if it's not quite right. I was surprised at how intellegent it is - it's not often that it doesn't pick the correct reply.

 

[CarltonA]

Even the generally good Chiltern Railways fob off customer complaints with weak responses. I complained about their TVM being very slow to issue tickets first thing in the morning. I had missed a train waiting for the machine to cough the tickets out for about five minutes and it was an hour until the next one. They replied saying they could find nothing wrong with the machine. A few months later I had cause to repeat the complaint. Again they wrote back and said "no fault logged with them" etc. Later when I mentioned it to the ticket clerk she told me straight away that they updated the system early in the morning and this made the machines slow. A shame that customer service could not be bothered to investigate properly to start with.

 

[DaveNewcastle]

I used to use similar software. The only time I had to step in and write a letter myself were if they were a seiral moaner and had already used up our entire supply of pre-written letters, or if they wrote to the CEO

Already exists - we have a system that automatically replies to customer emails. All the staff member has to do is read and release the reply, or add in/edit it if it's not quite right. I was surprised at how intellegent it is - it's not often that it doesn't pick the correct reply.

Yes, much of the skill is in analysing the incoming message, but equally crucial (or even more so) is the universality of the wording in the library paragraphs.

The search for a phrase which will always be applicable is well over a thousand years old - I can't recall the source right now, though Abraham Lincoln refered to it in 1859. The broader the scope of a reply, the less accuracy is required of the filter of incoming text.

All this raises the question of why we instigate correspondence with automated systems. We'd get a more personalised response from stroking the cat / walking the dog.

 

[swj99]

I thought the whole point was for the reply to avoid the issue as much as possible. Extra bonus points are awarded for the most obscure and irrelevant replies.

I wrote to a credit card company once after it offered to send me text reminders when a payment was due. I wrote and said no thanks, I don't want you to text me. They replied by saying they were taking my complaint very seriously. What complaint ?

 

[Bedpan]

Hope I'm not going too far off topic (well, I am,so sorry!!) - I had an e-mail doing the rounds at work, saying M&S, in conjunction with Persimmon Homes, were giving away vouchers as they were testing word of mouth advertising. The idea was that if you forwarded the e-mail to a certain number of people and cc'd in somebody with an @ persimmon homes address, you would be sent vouchers by e-mail.

As it was too good to be true I e-mailed back the person who had sent it to me, telling them not to be so stupid, complaining that they had possibly given my e-mail address to scammers, and suggesting they told all the other people they had forwarded it to to ignore it, and also to write to the person who had sent it to them. I also cc'd the e-mail to the person at Persimmon Homes to let them know what I had done.

I didn't expect a thank you e-mail from them which was just as well - a while later I received a very vitriolic e-mail from them "in response to my e-mail requesting M&S vouchers" etc etc.

 

[Starmill]

East Coast are very bad at replying to letters which actually relevant to what you said to them. Virgin are worse because they reply with the same thing every time, and do not address the issue at all, but their letter is polished to a fault. EC frequently send out things with sentences that don't really make sense, refer to their physical letters as emails or contain spelling mistakes. On the whole, the choice is between "We pretend to care what you think, here have some vouchers and come back next time." and "We trying a bit harder to pretend we care what you think, but aren't going to actually do anything whatsoever about that.". I leave it to the reader to decide which is preferable to them.

 

[oldman]

I posted here a while back about an incident at Blackpool North, where I was told off for standing on the platform and not boarding the train straight away. I emailed Northern, NOT mentioning the date or time and NOT describing the staff member in any way. Nevertheless I got a reply saying they had spoken to the individual concerned.

So either:

they reviewed all their CCTV for several days looking for an incident that might fit what I described, i.e. a staff member speaking to a passenger

they made up an answer which they thought would please me

I guess it was the second, in which case they failed because I did not want any particular individual 'spoken to' for implementing what seemed to be a station policy.

 

[Bletchleyite]

empathy annoys customers more I find. I am trained to use it, and customers want to know what happened, why, how, and how will I fix it.

Precisely. I often don't even want compensation, I want the issue solving. Sometimes it wants solving *now*, e.g. misinformation on PIS screens (oh for the days of David Whitley on LM Twitter, he had things like that, and stop orders added, and the likes, straight away).

A standard response speaks badly of any company to me, as it means they have not properly read my correspondence and thus have amply demonstrated they don't give a stuff about it.

Neil
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I guess it was the second, in which case they failed because I did not want any particular individual 'spoken to' for implementing what seemed to be a station policy.

Probably that.

By contrast I complained about the conduct of a Luton Airport shuttle bus driver a few years ago, where doors were closed on a passenger causing her shoe to end up inside the bus and her outside, then the driver refused to reopen the doors when this was pointed out. The reply I got (after a bit of to and froing) contained information I had omitted from the complaint, and as such made it very clear that CCTV had indeed been reviewed. I didn't see the driver again (used the airport twice weekly at that point), so it appears action was taken (though I wasn't after a sacking, a stern telling off would have sufficed - I suppose it is possible they were moved to non-public-facing driving duties, though, or it was the last straw for them and they resigned).

I was very impressed - but in the event of a serious complaint this should be the norm, not the exception. I accept there are many frivolous complaints, of course.

Neil
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I wrote to a credit card company once after it offered to send me text reminders when a payment was due. I wrote and said no thanks, I don't want you to text me. They replied by saying they were taking my complaint very seriously. What complaint ?

I went to Manchester on the day of the bombing in 1995 (?), by train on the Southport line. The evacuation of parts of Manchester city centre started before the train had left Wigan Wallgate, yet no attempt was seemingly made (or it wasn't successful) to get a communication to it to stop it disgorging more people (including me) into Manchester city centre. I wrote to the then NorthWest Regional Railways to express displeasure at this, and suggest their emergency procedures needed a review.

I got an apology for the delays which were out of their control.

I gave up.

Neil

 

[Chrism20]

EC over the last year or so have got very good at the old copying and pasting.

I've written to them several times in regard to the state of the train and the service, in particular the absence of staff and/or service due to them all sitting at a table in K from Morpeth onwards for an hour cackling away then it's like the ready money round as they fly through the three carriages clearing dirty crockery around about Dunbar.

I've had the cut and paste response and replied back saying thank you for the cut and paste now can you please answer the question. They just replied with a slightly different cut and paste version.

Writing to Karen Boswell personally also does no good as she (or her PA) just doesn't reply.

At least Virgin has the decency to throw in an rtv when gobbing you off

 

[richw]

Precisely. I often don't even want compensation, I want the issue solving. Sometimes it wants solving *now*, e.g. misinformation on PIS screens (oh for the days of David Whitley on LM Twitter, he had things like that, and stop orders added, and the likes, straight away).

A standard response speaks badly of any company to me, as it means they have not properly read my correspondence and thus have amply demonstrated they don't give a stuff about it.

Neil
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---


Probably that.

By contrast I complained about the conduct of a Luton Airport shuttle bus driver a few years ago, where doors were closed on a passenger causing her shoe to end up inside the bus and her outside, then the driver refused to reopen the doors. The reply I got (after a bit of to and froing) contained information I had omitted from the complaint, and as such made it very clear that CCTV had indeed been reviewed. I didn't see the driver again (used the airport twice weekly at that point), so it appears action was taken.

I was very impressed - but in the event of a serious complaint this should be the norm, not the exception. I accept there are many frivolous complaints, of course.

Neil

I wrote to one organisation about a year ago, complimenting a member of staff for going above and beyond to help me.
I provide no details about what led to that staff assisting me, however received a response thanking me for contact, they'd rewarded the member of staff, but they also went into detail about the prior incident apologising and gave me £50 in gift vouchers. They'd clearly spoken with that member of staff to gather details of what had happened, which made me feel she had been made aware of my contact.

In a previous job I worked at, the store manager did not share any feedback, positive or negative with staff. The admin assistant would sneakily tell us of any positive comments,
In my current job all positive feedback is put in the weekly newsletter for all to read and has a feel good feeling reading it.

 

[PHILIPE]

I complained to Scotrail several years ago re lack of CIS at Dalmuir. There are 3 platforms there with 5 faces and it is possible to get trains going to Glasgow or Dumbarton from different platforms and separated by a footbridge. The next station along the line had CIS with only an Up and Down platforms. So which platform do you go to ?
The reply came back saying they agreed with everything I had said but no proper answer. Happily the situation has since been resolved.
It makes me wonder if people in Customer Relations have any knowledge of Railway operating.

 

[Baxenden Bank]

.....
It makes me wonder if people in Customer Relations have any knowledge of Railway operating.

You can blame this on consultants convincing customer facing companies to spend millions on their dodgy advice that customers want "empathy", rather than answers.

empathy annoys customers more I find. I am trained to use it, and customers want to know what happened, why, how, and how will I fix it.

Do the 'Customer Relations' team in any large business nowadays have any relationship with the rest of the company they reply on behalf of?

In my perfect world, a centralised customer relations team would not actually answer correspondence. Rather they would read correspondence, pass it to the relevant section, chase up a response after a set period, then pass that response to the customer. The advantage of centralised customer service ought to be that the type and number of complaints / service requests / whatever can be collated, analysed, passed to senior management to deal with strategically.

In terms of railways, if you are simply asking for delay / repay then that can be dealt with by a central team, but specific comments about specific services need specific answers. If a specific part of a service is receiving lots of comments e.g. East Coast On Board First Class service (apparently), then that needs flagging up at senior level. Beardie Branson will not be a happy man come the takeover!

I suppose part of the problem is the volume of 'low level' comments the railways must receive.

I gave up contacting railway companies many years ago, having had the 'standard' response, irrelevant to the question asked, so many times. If I can have compensation I fill in the form, otherwise I just moan to anyone who will listen about how bad rail company X or Y are. Trash their reputation for satisfaction and withhold your custom for impact.

My local bus company, First in the Potteries, had it's customer service function in Norwich, very useful! But the response from there was to the same level as the previous local version - non existent!

As couple of previous posts mentioned empathy. Late last year I had a broadband / telephone problem. The man in India was riddled with empathy - yet all I wanted was to know what the problem was and when it would be fixed, answers he could not give me, so poor customer service, however sorry he may have been told to be by his CRM script.

 

[PHILIPE]

Call Centres and automated messages were the worst things to come out of improvements in technology over the years. One should be expected to talk to a person straight away and be able to talk to a person with knowledge in the particular field

 

[Chrism20]

Call Centres and automated messages were the worst things to come out of improvements in technology over the years. One should be expected to talk to a person straight away and be able to talk to a person with knowledge in the particular field

Add voice recognition to that list, I'd like to have half an hour with whoever dreamed that one up.

 

[fowler9]

Call Centres and automated messages were the worst things to come out of improvements in technology over the years. One should be expected to talk to a person straight away and be able to talk to a person with knowledge in the particular field

And one would probably pay a lot of money for it. Not that I agree with that. Part of the problem with dealing with complaints is that people expect either a) financial compensation for something that didn't financially inconvenience them or b) to hear that the person they are complaining about has been sacked. In most cases they will not receive satisfaction. Most people just want money. I am a complaint manager for a call centre in a different sector and I frequently listen to calls. In about 95% of the calls complained about the customer was wrong. In about 4.999% the call handler made an honest mistake. In about 0.001% the call handler was out of order. I am being harsh on the call handlers there. All errors are handled accordingly within the company. We are harsh on people who mess up at our end because we don't actually enjoy taking abuse off pee'd off customers.

 

[DelayRepay]

What really annoys me is that even internal departments at work are turning into call centres now. If a computer needs fixing, I can't go downstairs to the IT room any more, I have to ring a call centre where someone will take all the details and type them into a system. This sends a message to the person in the IT room downstairs who then rings me to ask what the problem is.

Call centres are great for simple queries but if you need help with something complex... may the good lord help you!

 

[Baxenden Bank]

And one would probably pay a lot of money for it. Not that I agree with that. Part of the problem with dealing with complaints is that people expect either a) financial compensation for something that didn't financially inconvenience them or b) to hear that the person they are complaining about has been sacked. In most cases they will not receive satisfaction. Most people just want money. I am a complaint manager for a call centre in a different sector and I frequently listen to calls. In about 95% of the calls complained about the customer was wrong. In about 4.999% the call handler made an honest mistake. In about 0.001% the call handler was out of order. I am being harsh on the call handlers there. All errors are handled accordingly within the company. We are harsh on people who mess up at our end because we don't actually enjoy taking abuse off pee'd off customers.

Re bold:

But if the customers are already pee'd off because of a fault / error, and then get more pee'd off by automated / voice recognition systems, then even more pee'd off waiting to get through to a real live human being, the call handler doesn't really stand a chance. I have every sympathy for call handlers (incoming, not cold call sales) because one thing is pretty certain - whatever the issue is - they didn't cause it - because they are probably a remote (and out-sourced) facility anyway.

There is an NPower business advert on Classic FM at them moment in which they state' all calls answered within 1 minute' - 1 minute - I'm gone well before then, get the fail to answer call rate up Where I worked, answer within three rings or else - but that's the incompetent public sector for you!

 

[fowler9]

Re bold:

But if the customers are already pee'd off because of a fault / error, and then get more pee'd off by automated / voice recognition systems, then even more pee'd off waiting to get through to a real live human being, the call handler doesn't really stand a chance. I have every sympathy for call handlers (incoming, not cold call sales) because one thing is pretty certain - whatever the issue is - they didn't cause it - because they are probably a remote (and out-sourced) facility anyway.

There is an NPower business advert on Classic FM at them moment in which they state' all calls answered within 1 minute' - 1 minute - I'm gone well before then, get the fail to answer call rate up Where I worked, answer within three rings or else - but that's the incompetent public sector for you!

I agree with you mate but you ain't going to get an answer within three rings anymore in the private sector unless you pay for the staff to do it. For that to happen either the end user has to pay more or the shareholder has to take the hit. The shareholder is never going to take the hit in this society. As the manager people get put through to I know exactly what they want. I sadly also know most of it is not possible.

 

[Baxenden Bank]

I agree with you mate but you ain't going to get an answer within three rings anymore in the private sector unless you pay for the staff to do it. For that to happen either the end user has to pay more or the shareholder has to take the hit. The shareholder is never going to take the hit in this society. As the manager people get put through to I know exactly what they want. I sadly also know most of it is not possible.

But if customer service gets so bad (with or without centralised customer service centres) and customers take their business elsewhere as a result - then the shareholder has to take the hit. By then it is too late because it is harder to attract a new customer than retain an existing one. NPower (domestic) was in the news again last week for its significantly higher than the rest level of complaints. More importantly they don't seem to actually be doing anything about it - lots of fine words but little apparent change - hence at least one customer has left them (me). I suspect more may also have left.

Returning to the topic, the same applies. Customers buying a First Class ticket expect a certain level of service, as advertised. Some would say they are contracted to receive it, described as complementary or not - see the article in Rail this week on the very same subject (Barry Doe I think).

Having taken the trouble to highlight their service deficiency, I would expect from East Coast, at least, a response which looked as though they gave a fig about what is happening on their services. Perhaps they are demob happy? If they continue to blather about, people will downgrade to standard, or to alternative modes, or to not travel at all. Perhaps First Class on East Coast is so busy they can afford to lose some business?

It's not always about receiving compensation. In many cases it's about the customers caring more about the service than the business itself! and them wanting to see the level of service restored, or at least honestly advertised so they know what they will receive in return for their money.

 

[rdeez]

Good customer service isn't hard - or shouldn't be.

Poor customer service: Arriva used to provide our local bus service back in the day when I relied on them to get to and from work. Their central customer relations department was worse than useless - the frequency with which buses were 10, 20 minutes late with no explanation (usually the driver fobbed people off with "traffic"...bearing in mind this was a rural route...), or just didn't show up at all, didn't matter to them. Their standard reply was "our records show the driver left x timing point on time". Right.

Excellent customer service: A new company got the contract from the council to run the buses. The timetables changed. One morning I was waiting for my bus home after a night shift and there was no sign of it at all. 15 minutes passed, and as the bus company had provided a number at the shelter I decided to call them to see if I'd got my times mixed up. To my surprise, this was the number for their depot, and the guy who answered confirmed there should have been a bus there and he would find out where it was and call me back.

5 minutes later he called me back to say the driver had mixed up his weekday and weekend timetables and had left 10 minutes early - but not to worry as he had turned around and was on his way back to pick me up (after checking with the 2 passengers on board that they didn't mind)!

I was stunned. And incredibly grateful, as the next one was an hour away, it was cold and I was exhausted.

No particular relation to rail, and the positive is an extreme example - but it goes to show that actually listening to the problem and responding in kind makes all the difference.

 

[Baxenden Bank]

...
All this raises the question of why we instigate correspondence with automated systems. We'd get a more personalised response from stroking the cat / walking the dog.

Because, naively, we still think that when we contact an organisation, that someone in that organisation takes the time to read, digest, investigate and reply.

Strangely, I cannot recall a single web page, article, press release etc, by a company (rail or elsewhere) which clearly states that most correspondence is replied to automatically with stock paragraphs without any actual consideration of the issues raised. The conclusion I draw from this is that companies using such systems do not wish their customers to realise just how little the organisation thinks of them!

When people telephone a company instead, and get through to a (often out-sourced) call centre, they actually expect a conversation with that person. In reality, the call-handler is as strictly limited in their response to the caller (through the CRM software) as any automated response system. You are, in effect, talking to a machine that happens to have a voice.

The computers says no!

 

[fowler9]

But if customer service gets so bad (with or without centralised customer service centres) and customers take their business elsewhere as a result - then the shareholder has to take the hit. By then it is too late because it is harder to attract a new customer than retain an existing one. NPower (domestic) was in the news again last week for its significantly higher than the rest level of complaints. More importantly they don't seem to actually be doing anything about it - lots of fine words but little apparent change - hence at least one customer has left them (me). I suspect more may also have left.

Returning to the topic, the same applies. Customers buying a First Class ticket expect a certain level of service, as advertised. Some would say they are contracted to receive it, described as complementary or not - see the article in Rail this week on the very same subject (Barry Doe I think).

Having taken the trouble to highlight their service deficiency, I would expect from East Coast, at least, a response which looked as though they gave a fig about what is happening on their services. Perhaps they are demob happy? If they continue to blather about, people will downgrade to standard, or to alternative modes, or to not travel at all. Perhaps First Class on East Coast is so busy they can afford to lose some business?

It's not always about receiving compensation. In many cases it's about the customers caring more about the service than the business itself! and them wanting to see the level of service restored, or at least honestly advertised so they know what they will receive in return for their money.

That is a fair point mate and I don't know what the East Coast business model is but I would imagine that it would be pretty hard for a complaint handler to find out exactly why complementary tea and coffee wasn't served on that particular train. They may possibly have tried making calls and sending e-mails to the third party involved but from experience of similar fields they are wasting their time as no one will get back to them.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Because, naively, we still think that when we contact an organisation, that someone in that organisation takes the time to read, digest, investigate and reply.

Strangely, I cannot recall a single web page, article, press release etc, by a company (rail or elsewhere) which clearly states that most correspondence is replied to automatically with stock paragraphs without and actuall consideration of the issues raised. The conclusion I draw from this is that companies using such systems do not wish their customers to realise just how little the organisation thinks of them!

When people telephone a company instead, and get through to a (often out-sourced) call centre, they actually expect a conversation with that person. In reality, the call-handler is as strictly limited in their response to the caller (through the CRM software) as any automated response system. You are, in effect, talking to a machine that happens to have a voice.

The computers says no!

Again I agree.