\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0
\nI\u2019ve had a right royal shindig of a past month or so, on and off trains and buses, in all parts of the UK. I\u2019ve clocked up more miles than Phileas Fogg and if the railway is not on strike, I\u2019ll be on it. Amidst all this doomsday scenario moaning about the state of the transport industry I\u2019ve been well blessed with some good experiences \u2013 friendly staff and barely any disruption. <\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t an article eulogising and praising everyone, goodness me, I\u2019m hosting a table at the National Rail Awards next week (long story, but I\u2019ve not gone all native, before you ask). There will be enough backslapping and fawning there to see out the year. The problem in the industry is that it\u2019s all binary \u2013 we\u2019re either telling folk we\u2019re heroes or everything is stuffed. My journeys made me reflective \u2013 transport is not too bad in parts, but far from polished.<\/p>\n
What struck me about my trips is that over the past couple of decades, the quality of staff has improved and there has been a step change. There seem to be fewer anti-customer muppets out there. Over the course of the summer, I cannot recall a single bus driver or member of railway staff who I had to blink twice at and ask myself \u2018is this for real?\u2019 or get a note of the registration of the bus or description of the gateline employee and feed it back to the transport operators. Back in the day, on at least a third of trips, you\u2019d always stumble across someone who would stick out as a jobsworth who was going out of their way looking for a rumble with customers. Transport managers know who I mean, I\u2019ve a list in my head of the most satanic employees I\u2019ve managed in my career \u2013 the type whose name would dominate almost every customer complaint. I\u2019m not saying they don\u2019t exist anymore, but they are in the extreme minority, and I\u2019d say their antics have made them ostracised by colleagues who care about customers and realise that transport is in the fight of its life for survival right now, particularly post-Covid. Whatever the strike-induced employee relations woes, I\u2019m not noticing a backlash among staff \u2013 if anything they have more of a spring in their step than ever before, particularly on-train folk.<\/p>\n
We shouldn\u2019t crack open the celebratory champers just yet, because there are hard yards still to be put in. The challenge is less around getting staff to put customers first, it\u2019s more a case of making them more polished in the first instance and being bold enough to then try and encourage them to live and breathe a brand personality and create more of a vibe and sense of occasion. I\u2019ve mostly bus drivers in mind in this respect. As part of the Great Scenic Journeys business that I\u2019ve set up, we audit and accredit from a customer experience perspective the routes that are part of our collection across all modes, and this gives us great insights in terms of the state of the nation. <\/p>\n
Polish and self-awareness still remain an issue<\/p>\n
Polish and self-awareness still remain an issue. Quite often, I hear these endless noise polluting, bordering on officious on-train announcements before the journey commences and just wish them to end so I can continue a conversation with a colleague, get back to listening to music on my headphones or concentrate on work. When I listen to this authoritative, droning drivel, I imagine the employee that comes through the train to be a customer service dissident, pain in the neck, but thankfully that\u2019s never the case, which makes me wonder why, if they are genuinely nice people, do they fail to realise that just because they are given a microphone at the beginning of a journey, they need to come across all jobsworth and verbose?<\/p>\n
In terms of polish, we\u2019ve also still got a lot to do with bus drivers and it\u2019s like a dagger to my heart when I\u2019m undertaking a mystery shopping report and literally ready to give full marks as I disembark, only to see the driver also get off the bus and stand outside in full view of customers, with a fag hanging out their mouth, indulging in horseplay with colleagues. It\u2019s also noticeable how a few drivers still have a groupie hanging around them on journeys and often \u2013 dare I say it? \u2013 those who do not help add value to the branded on-board experience. Yesterday. on an open top bus through the most stunning of scenery, the driver was literally followed throughout his return journey by someone standing chatting to him with ripped jeans, studs and piercings across all parts, unwashed, unkempt hair \u2013 he was like someone that you\u2019d see in The Walking Dead<\/em>. I knew he wasn\u2019t a customer because when I boarded, the bus arrived with him already there and the driver said \u201chello, you are my first customer today\u201d and then when I alighted, he joined him for a fag. This kind of behaviour should be consigned to the era of On The Buses.<\/p>\n Customer contact staff still lack a bit of polish too and the onus is still on the caller to prompt the employee to provide more than the most superficial of information for their call, tempting them to give more than just the bare minimum. I\u2019ve lost count of the number of times I\u2019ve asked, \u2018could you tell me what the best journeys for a day out are?\u2019 or \u2018what\u2019s the most scenic bus route you have?\u2019, only to receive staccato replies and a complete gulf between my childlike enthusiasm and the employee\u2019s soul-sapping circumspection. I\u2019ve seen better sales patter in the procurement or IT department than from customer relations!<\/p>\n Drivers and rail staff often fail to realise that on a leisure journey, in particular, customers want to feel that their experience is going to be special. The trip they are making is a big deal and they want staff to rise to the occasion \u2013 to reflect the brand personality that the images on the side of the bus or train or the marketing has portrayed, to act as if their adventure might pan out in a certain way because the weather outside will give the view a more serene or moody or generally atmospheric vibe and they want simple and decent product knowledge. Animated families arrive at a bus, all fired up about their experience to come, having read the great marketing leaflets, only to be greeted with a driver who isn\u2019t impolite but simply doesn\u2019t wish to share in their enthusiasm. You can see the joy and anticipation fade from the faces of these fun-hungry customers. Why can\u2019t the driver keep their mood going by entering into the spirit and going out of his\/her way to create a sense of occasion \u2013 a massive smile, some titbits on the scenery, heritage of the route and the sights and attractions on the journey and a hearty \u2018goodbye\u2019 when they disembark? Scenic thrill seekers don\u2019t want to feel as if they are getting on the bus for work on a rainy Monday morning.<\/p>\n Self-awareness is key and on social media last month a lady complained that she and her chum had travelled across the world to go on a train over the Forth Bridge, only for the RPO to decide to walk through the train at that point and undertake a ticket inspection, thus encroaching on the experience. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0 The challenge, of course, is time and resources and if the marketing manager works within a big transport owning group, the chances are that they have a patch which stretches from the tip of the Northern hemisphere to the foot of the Southern and they are more overworked, overstretched and under-supported than your local GP or police. What\u2019s more, these valuable resources are paid a pittance even though they are the revenue generators at a time when the industry needs new products and reasons to travel, in a more crowded space where folk in this digital age, are bombarded with marketing messages trying to capture their attention. <\/p>\n Trust me please, particularly as I probably travel more than most, but the area of the service proposition that seems to be most reliable currently involves staff, whereas those customer touchpoints that are not reliable involve infrastructure<\/p>\n Trust me please, particularly as I probably travel more than most, but the area of the service proposition that seems to be most reliable currently involves staff, whereas those customer touchpoints that are not reliable involve infrastructure. This list is not exhaustive, and it includes short-formed trains, empty catering trolleys, plug sockets and Wi-Fi that don\u2019t work. Add in further shortcomings and it\u2019s a litany of woes \u2013 defective buses, ticket machines, damaged and out of date notices, empty covings on-board, unbranded buses, unreplaced leaflets. Meanwhile, we have hourly bus services timed one minute after the hourly train has departed at the bus\/rail interchange, bus stations that look dilapidated, with blank graffitied poster frames and layer upon layer of grime on the floor, and so on. Don\u2019t get me started on the Travel Shops without a single branded notice and d\u00e9cor that is about as modern in appearance as your musty, local charity shop or church hall. <\/p>\n All this is particularly worrying as the trend towards de-staffing continues unabated, with \u2018Workplace Reform\u2019 (as the corporate clones have called it in rail) leading to ticket office closures and reduced on-board staff. We\u2019ll have bus drivers for the foreseeable future but less and less non-driving staff, such as hosts or inspectors hanging round bus stations giving helpful advice. Meanwhile, customer call centres are cutting numbers, leading to longer wait times or transport companies are actively preventing customers from knowing their phone number or email address.<\/p>\n With each month that passes, we travel on a network where the proposition is presented to us in terms of infrastructure, but less or no staff to guide us through it \u2013 a classic \u2018you\u2019re on your own, fend for yourself\u2019 mentality<\/p>\n With each month that passes, we travel on a network where the proposition is presented to us in terms of infrastructure, but less or no staff to guide us through it \u2013 a classic \u2018you\u2019re on your own, fend for yourself\u2019 mentality. All this is made worse by, from my experiences over the past month, by the fact that the gaps in the product are those where customers are left to their own devices (literally) and where touchpoints bereft of a human interaction. Can\u2019t those in authority see that it\u2019s frontline staff who, even though they lack panache and polish and can be ham-fisted at times but almost always well-intentioned, they are the favourable touchpoints right? More often than not, staff are the only positive that can be gleaned during the whole end-to-end journey experience.<\/p>\n In some parts of UK transport, it comes down to that age old problem that a minority of those in charge, the so-called boffins who design the proposition and those inspirational, \u2018me, me, me\u2019 leaders, are invariably clueless because they seldom if ever travel on their own services. And when they do very occasionally get on-board, they are too busy posting selfies of their great leadership skills on social media to actually look at their substandard proposition with any sense of customer-focused objectivity. Bring on the National Rail Awards next week. <\/p>\n \u00a0 DON\u2019T MISS OUT \u2013 GET YOUR COPY! \u2013\u00a0click here to subscribe!<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The post It\u2019s not bad, but it\u2019s far from polished<\/a> first appeared on Passenger Transport<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u200b\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 Sometimes we hear that transport is in a dire state, other times the sector is hailed as heroes.The truth is somewhere in between \u00a0 I\u2019ve had a right royal shindig of a past month or so, on and off trains and buses, in all parts of the UK. I\u2019ve clocked up more miles than Phileas Fogg and if the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3135,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-camcab"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3134"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nIt\u2019s easy to chide staff, but I actually think they are doing a reasonable job despite the efforts of those in suits back in HQ or more likely the comfort of their homes, sipping tea and stroking the cat on the keyboard, whilst they are on Teams calls. On a train last week, I scribbled in my notebook some of the gaps in the end-to-end customer journey proposition that I\u2019d encountered on my travels, and they were mainly those where top brass and their support structures had failed staff and customers, either through a lack of inspiration, impetus, strategy or poor process. <\/p>\n
\nMarketing is a challenge and it\u2019s one that frustrates me massively. I celebrate raucously when I go into a tourist attraction or office, a hospital or university and see some leaflets pertaining to the local bus company or I ask the employee at these third-party organisations if they can give details of the services and they do so and in a manner in which they look like they are advocates. I visit some places, like the Exmoor National Park Centre and the staff are practically caressing prospective bus customers and forcing them to travel on First\u2019s wonderful Exmoor Coaster. Not content with doing just that, they then eulogise about the service on their official and personal social media channels. But these scenarios are the exception rather than the norm and it\u2019s no use just saying \u2018we don\u2019t do leaflets anymore, they\u2019re too expensive and it\u2019s all online\u2019 \u2013 there are a whole range of ways to engage partners.<\/p>\n
This story appears inside the latest issue of\u00a0Passenger Transport<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n