Avanti's... interesting Twitter policy

[Bishopstone]

People, in general, are very fractious at the moment, for understandable reasons. This includes both customers and staff (not just on the railway).

I know people want ‘everything to be normal again’, but in the interim we’re going to need to make allowances for each others stresses and strains. Especially at 05.00 hours.

 

[Horizon22]

This was ill-judged comment really. I think that's the end of it. They've tried to row it back by attempting to explain their previous comment but the damage had been done.

Maybe the individual is difficult and has previous, but you should still give everyone a minimum level of service and leave sarcasm out of it as it can really backfire in text only formats.

 

[Llanigraham]

The Twitter exchange wasn’t that bad. Brusque rather than rude. Mountain out of molehill.

Agreed, and showed there were humans involved, not robots.

 

[Merseysider]

Avanti have stated that they've now issued a private apology to said customer. Couldn't believe what I had read in that tweet this morning.

Good. My first thought on reading Avanti’s tweets was “what an asshole”. Glad to hear they’ve apologised as it was totally out of line regardless of who the customer is.

I know for a fact if I spoke to someone at work in that tone I’d be out of a job immediately.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 14 Dec 2021 ==

Maybe the individual is difficult and has previous, but you should still give everyone a minimum level of service and leave sarcasm out of it as it can really backfire in text only formats.

Agree 100%. Sarcasm doesn’t translate into text very well and it’s much better to use smileys/emoticons.

 

[Liverpool 507]

Have another look at the transcript - they definitely signed off with a name.

You've misread what I meant. The day team sign off as ' - Name'. Control have signed off as ' ^Name'. The day team wouldn't start earlier than 0600 or 0530.

 

[Jim the Jim]

The passenger does have the air of someone who is fully aware that the solution is "get the next train" and is fully capable of working their way around a timetable to work out the details of that. It looks like a vent at the company rather than a genuine request for help. Now maybe the professional response in such situations is still to be polite, but one can at least understand why an overstretched member of control might go for a bit of sarcasm instead. They aren't going around attacking random confused passengers out of the blue.

 

[jamesst]

People, in general, are very fractious at the moment, for understandable reasons. This includes both customers and staff (not just on the railway).

I know people want ‘everything to be normal again’, but in the interim we’re going to need to make allowances for each others stresses and strains. Especially at 05.00 hours.

This exactly, anyone can have a bad day

 

[yorkie]

The Twitter exchange wasn’t that bad. Brusque rather than rude. Mountain out of molehill.

Do you work, or have you ever worked, in a customer facing role?

I have and would not consider using such a tone towards a customer.

It's now made national news:

Avanti: Train company apologises for pandemic tweet

A passenger "disappointed" to be stranded was messaged with "I'm disappointed there is a pandemic".

www.bbc.co.uk

Train operator Avanti has apologised for "sarcastic" tweets about Covid-19 it sent to a stranded passenger.
The passenger complained on Twitter he was "disappointed" when his train from Wolverhampton was cancelled, and asked for advice on onward travel.
Avanti responded by saying: "I'm disappointed there is a pandemic. You can catch the next service."
A spokesperson said posts fell "well below the standards we expect".

Credit to Avanti for apologising.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 14 Dec 2021 ==

One of the skills required to work in customer service is dealing with awkward customers (either serially-awkward or on one exchange) while remaining polite and not bringing your employer into disrepute. This was unfortunately a fail.

Exactly.

Working in such a role is not for everyone; not everyone is suited to such a role. To be successful in such a role you have to be able to deal with people in an appropriate manner. If someone was exhibiting behaviour that was too challenging to deal with, you would at that point need to withdraw and/or seek help from a colleague.

 

[adc82140]

There should never be staff who are not part of the social media team manning Twitter. It seems someone from control is trying (and failing) to be funny. They just need to make it clear that the Twitter feed is answered between certain times when the proper staff are available.

 

[Bletchleyite]

There should never be staff who are not part of the social media team manning Twitter. It seems someone from control is trying (and failing) to be funny. They just need to make it clear that the Twitter feed is answered between certain times when the proper staff are available.

The advantage of Control doing it is that you get good quality information.

 

[LowLevel]

There should never be staff who are not part of the social media team manning Twitter. It seems someone from control is trying (and failing) to be funny. They just need to make it clear that the Twitter feed is answered between certain times when the proper staff are available.

Of course they should. It's a valuable tool for talking to people in real time when there are problems, particularly late at night when you have fewer staff available to respond.

They are still generally controllers who are trained in dealing with the public, answering help points etc - at our Control it would usually be the duty manager in charge of the non safety critical customer service/contact controllers replying out of hours.

 

[robbeech]

There should never be staff who are not part of the social media team manning Twitter. It seems someone from control is trying (and failing) to be funny. They just need to make it clear that the Twitter feed is answered between certain times when the proper staff are available.

Many questions you ask the social media team have to be passed to control anyway taking time and more resources.
If you speak to control with a ‘knowledgeable’ question you MAY get a better answer than from the social media team who may have stock replies or try to fob you off. Or, you may get a sarcastic useless answer I suppose.

 

[Bishopstone]

Do you work, or have you ever worked, in a customer facing role?

I have and would not consider using such a tone towards a customer.

Yes, for 27 years.

I know there are occasions on which I have been blunt/brusque to customers, and substanially more occasions on which they have been rude or (rarely) abusive to me.

Neither is worth dwelling upon. If front line roles were the preserve of those who could maintain emotional balance 365 days a year, 24/7, then there would be quite substantial staff shortages!

 

[Horizon22]

The advantage of Control doing it is that you get good quality information.

The social media team based in "Control" is a bit different from the the Train Running Controller in "Control" doing it - the people sending these tweets out should have adequate training and good judgment. If this is out of hours (which it was), without a night social media team I don't know who would pick up the Twitter (some TOCs just don't reply between say 2200-0600), and we don't know what role Sean has, unless someone wants to dig through Avanti's twitter profile and see whether "Sean" has turned up previously.

What the controller tells you might not be publicly broadcastable! Part of the skill is translating railway "speak" into something passengers will understand and appreciate.

 

[Jordan1296]

Seems like the railway has more than one worker that should have thought longer before using their words. Today, on my train home, the conductor - over the tannoy - uttered the words “it’s still a legal requirement to wear a face covering on all forms of public transport in Scotland. Wise up!” No other words were said during the journey, and he didn’t come through to check tickets.

As far as I could tell, all passengers who boarded the train at that station were mask compliant. Appreciate it gets the message across but there are different ways he could have put that request.

 

[yorkie]

Seems like the railway has more than one worker that should have thought longer before using their words. Today, on my train home, the conductor - over the tannoy - uttered the words “it’s still a legal requirement to wear a face covering on all forms of public transport in Scotland. Wise up!” No other words were said during the journey, and he didn’t come through to check tickets.

As far as I could tell, all passengers who boarded the train at that station were mask compliant. Appreciate it gets the message across but there are different ways he could have put that request.

This does not surprise me.

Some people lack intelligence, respect for others, are ignorant and take their job for granted. Sadly some of these people work as train Guards and other frontline roles in the rail industry, and that certainly includes ScotRail.

I've encountered quite a few individuals like this on the railway over the years.

 

[Llandudno]

I do wish one of the Gold TV stations would should a repeat run of the 1980s comedy Colin’s Sandwich starring the late Mel Smith as a telephone complaints handler for British Rail…!

 

[Bluejays]

At first glance I thought it was a daft tweet from avanti. Although, from the following messages it appears that there may be more context. I do feel sorry for the social media people sometimes, the amount of inane and idiotic messages they get off spotters must drive them nuts

 

[Bletchleyite]

At first glance I thought it was a daft tweet from avanti. Although, from the following messages it appears that there may be more context. I do feel sorry for the social media people sometimes, the amount of inane and idiotic messages they get off spotters must drive them nuts

To be honest, if they are harrassing them, it would be better to block them than lose your rag.

 

[SuspectUsual]

the amount of inane and idiotic messages they get off spotters must drive them nuts

Yes, I’m sure that’s the case, but if I take Northern for example (the TOC I use most by far), when they had repeated service meltdowns a couple of years ago they were taking hours to reply to passengers asking for help because their train had been cancelled but happily replied quickly to requests like “where is 158xxx today?” Priorities!

 

[robbeech]

Yes, I’m sure that’s the case, but if I take Northern for example (the TOC I use most by far), when they had repeated service meltdowns a couple of years ago they were taking hours to reply to passengers asking for help because their train had been cancelled but happily replied quickly to requests like “where is 158xxx today?” Priorities!

There are times when nobody turned up in Northern Twitter land so there was nobody to respond for 4 or 5 hours. The competitions and other such drivel are automated so every hour on the hour an automated post was made. It was annoying to people when there was severe disruption and nobody replying to tweets made worse by a competition being posted at 1000 and 1100.

To top it all off as soon as someone arrive the first things they would start replying to as you said were people entering the competition. They could have 40 questions about their joke of a train service unanswered. And when questioned about it they denied nobody was there and said they’d been replying all morning as if somehow Twitter wasn’t public.

 

[Bluejays]

To be honest, if they are harrassing them, it would be better to block them than lose your rag.

That's true, but a quick look at this particular blokes twitter shows that he likes to have regular 'banter' with toc twitter accounts. They're good enough to indulge his attention seeking and constant tweets, hopefully they won't be in future.

Still a daft response by the avanti guy on twitter

 

[Dave W]

You've misread what I meant. The day team sign off as ' - Name'. Control have signed off as ' ^Name'. The day team wouldn't start earlier than 0600 or 0530.

Ah yes, I see what you mean. My bad.

I still think this is someone having a very bad day at work - they do happen even in customer service roles (of which, to pre-empt the question, I've had many).

How many times have you left a shop and thought "that was rude" - and then simply got on with your day? In fact how many times have you had a poor experience with staff on the railway. It happens. We can all throw our arms up in the air about how utterly awful it all is, but ultimately, it's just someone that's guilty of a single moment of poor judgement at work. There for the grace of god...

 

[robbeech]

Avanti, amongst other operators have a ‘power’ focussed attitude to social media. They will block individuals that may negatively effect their revenue stream (even if it’s an unlawful one). For example when they give out incorrect advice to a passenger and their advice is revenue positive (they’ll make more money than they’re entitled to) and someone corrects them (politely, firmly, however) then it’s an internal policy to block such individuals because it interferes with revenue.

Example (different operator) a passenger asks if a ticket is valid on a specific train in the evening peak. Gets told NO, this is a peak train you need an anytime ticket, what’s more they were told they would have to buy a whole new ticket rather then excess.
I corrected them and told them there are no evening peak restrictions on that ticket so it was perfectly valid. I think I even linked to the restriction code on NRE . They replied telling me a peak train is a peak train and I was blocked, because the operator does not want me telling passengers their rights because that affects their profit.

 

[Facing Back]

It would have been better to give no apology and simply a factual "You can use your ticket on the next train" than a sarcastic one that was essentially a wordier "sorrynotsorry".

One of the skills required to work in customer service is dealing with awkward customers (either serially-awkward or on one exchange) while remaining polite and not bringing your employer into disrepute. This was unfortunately a fail.

Agreed. Generally we expect customer service staff to become more "professional" to more awkward a customer is or is known to be - that doesn't always equate to "helpful". Comments such as "I understand that you are disappointed, in this case as you can imagine it is because ...." and then "your ticket will be valid on the ...." say absolutely nothing but come with a heavy implication.

I have noticed that some of the best customer service staff work well with challenging customers by forming a relationship with them, however that worked well on one-to-one (in the olden days) - I really think though it is much more problematic with twitter where the conversation is not personal and private.

This guy obviously got it wrong and the company has responded - I would have thought that would be the end of it plus a bit of follow-on training for the team. That all seems proportionate and it doesn't seem like a big deal as a single example. I'm know I'm grumpy at 04:30 - but then nobody would let me anywhere near a customer at that time.

 

[Chrisgr31]

Many years ago I had social media training with AOL in the days before Twitter etc - I was a “volunteer host” effectively on their complaints team. The strict training was to smile from the wrists down, and if you weren’t sure about a post and a reply don’t reply.

This is why some TOC Twitter feeds block certain people, it takes the risk out of matters escalating.

Hopefully Sean has learnt the error of their way, and is still on the Twitter feed even if their name has changed.

 

[Ex-controller]

The person in charge of the Twitter account should never have responded in such a tone. They’ve probably prolonged the exchange far beyond what was necessary too. They really should be keeping those views to themselves.

Sometimes certain railway staff can overstep the mark of what is appropriate. In operational roles there is a culture of banter and sarcasm which can sometimes go wrong of applied inappropriately or to the wrong person. Things like this are the occasional result.

 

[fkofilee]

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 15 Dec 2021 ==

Also on a side note - I have worked for GTRs twitter team in the past...
Lets say I didnt stay long because it was literally a firefest

 

[Doctor Fegg]

Seems like the railway has more than one worker that should have thought longer before using their words. Today, on my train home, the conductor - over the tannoy - uttered the words “it’s still a legal requirement to wear a face covering on all forms of public transport in Scotland. Wise up!” No other words were said during the journey, and he didn’t come through to check tickets.

As far as I could tell, all passengers who boarded the train at that station were mask compliant. Appreciate it gets the message across but there are different ways he could have put that request.

I don't think I've heard the phrase "Wise up" since Pop Will Eat Itself in 1989. It's just a slightly colloquial version of "do the right thing" or "get educated", isn't it? Or does it have sharper connotations in Scotland?

 

[Merseysider]

I don't think I've heard the phrase "Wise up" since Pop Will Eat Itself in 1989. It's just a slightly colloquial version of "do the right thing" or "get educated", isn't it? Or does it have sharper connotations in Scotland?

Sounds patronising to me - but others may differ!