TOCs' Complaints Responses

[JimmyR]

bb21, I have no issue with standard responses from a template. In my job I use standard templates for common issues. That's not my problem.

My problem is TOCs that don't bother to read what one has said, and send stock responses that bear no relation to what I have actually complained about. It shouldn't be hard to filter complaints into appropriate work queues. Having to escalate anything other than a basic Delay Repay claim to Transport Focus is a waste of everyone's time.

London Midland used to be the worst at this, but Northern seem even worse thanks to their outsourcing.

Just reply saying that they didn't answer your complaint. We had a penalty type system for not replying properly (as long as it vaguely answers the complaint it was okay).

Just bear in can be quite difficult and time consuming to get a response to a non standard question.

Like, why was this train 60 minutes late? easy I can look it up.

Why was this train 2 minutes late? Who knows!

Why doesn't this door work at this station? Excuse me while I email the duty manager and chase up a response over the next 2 weeks....

 

[Bletchleyite]

Why doesn't this door work at this station? Excuse me while I email the duty manager and chase up a response over the next 2 weeks....

That's where a proper workflow system would help. The complaint would be workflowed to the manager to resolve, invoking root-cause analysis[1] if necessary, with their own SLAs to respond. It amazes me how few companies realise the benefits of this kind of approach.

[1] Example: a PIS screen has failed. "Incident" resolved by replacing it, service is restored. But it's the third one that's failed - so this is flagged and let's invoke root cause analysis and we find that a leaky roof above it is the cause. Fix that and the problem doesn't recur. It's an IT concept, but it applies just as well to absolutely every area of every business.

 

[Deepgreen]

It's worth bearing in mind that an overwhelming volume of complaints should not mean that the responses are useless - that just creates more. The volume of complaints will reflect the state of the railway, and therein lies the root of the problem.

 

[Deepgreen]

Just reply saying that they didn't answer your complaint. We had a penalty type system for not replying properly (as long as it vaguely answers the complaint it was okay).

Just bear in can be quite difficult and time consuming to get a response to a non standard question.

Like, why was this train 60 minutes late? easy I can look it up.

Why was this train 2 minutes late? Who knows!

Why doesn't this door work at this station? Excuse me while I email the duty manager and chase up a response over the next 2 weeks....

I would imagine that this is at odds with the automatic phrase-recognition system which seems to be the cause of so many mis-guided/wrong responses to complaints! You would appear to have your system fighting against itself.

 

[JimmyR]

I would imagine that this is at odds with the automatic phrase-recognition system which seems to be the cause of so many mis-guided/wrong responses to complaints! You would appear to have your system fighting against itself.

We had nothing of the sort, it was usually just advisors being dumb and not reading their responses. We had a selection of standard paragraphs for common complaints so I guess you can accidentally pick the wrong one or mis-read the complaint?

Everything else was manually completed though from indexing, working out comp to licking and sticking.

 

[MKB]

There is really not much point in doing anything other than venting on Twitter and this website if you want to improve the railways. Occasionally, writing to Customer Relations will elicit some travel vouchers, but that isn't really the objective, so I rarely bother.

With Virgin, their Twitter desk tell you to email a complaint, which is always, in my experience, completely ignored. You have to write them a paper letter to get anywhere.

XC have been the worst for handling my complaints. I see them as the Ryanair of railway customer service.

I've had some limited success when getting Transport Focus involved.

The best response I had was from First TransPennine when I complained about lack of any working toilets on a long journey. The well written reply empathised with my situation, explained what measures they were taking to reduce the problem, and offered very generous service recovery. They also asked if they could phone me to discuss the matter fully, which they duly did.

One of my biggest bugbears is when written responses are signed "The Customer Relations Team" or some similarly impersonal description. Having the human touch goes a long way to keeping customers happy, and hiding behind some anonymous handle lacks courtesy.

I also think it's really important that those people doing an excellent job on the railways are recognised so I always tweet if I encounter service well above the norm.