Research


The latest findings will greatly interest Ann Bates, deputy chair of the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee and chair of its Rail Group, who advises the Office of Rail Regulation and the Rail Safety and Standards Board. Bates has said DPTAC had ‘campaigned for many years for the effectiveness of this service to be researched’. Mystery shopping is also being deployed


elsewhere. Pearson’s Passenger Focus colleague Guy Dangerfield is heading another probe into how the rail industry provides information to passengers during unplanned service disruptions. The idea is to use the results to challenge Tocs to provide better information, so passengers can make informed choices when delays arise – such as trying to get from A to B via C. ‘In extreme delays, passengers would like to be able to judge if they stay put and work from home or, if they’re coming home, to try and get a hotel room for the night,’ says Dangerfield. Dangerfield stresses it’s difficult to


research unplanned ‘wires are down’ disruption. ‘We don’t know where it’s going to happen,’ says Dangerfield. To overcome this problem, Dangerfield’s project formed Passenger Focus’s online Disruption Panel by recruiting nearly 1,000 passengers at 19 larger stations in late 2009. Registered panellists provide Passenger Focus with anonymous online feedback about their experiences of unplanned delays. Panellists answer standard questions, including one that asks what could the train operator and Network Rail have done to render the delay less grim. A fair amount of the initial responses suggest passengers are too often provided


with little or no helpful information about delays, especially, though not exclusively, on driver-only commuter services. Some feedback was fed into emergency central government discussions on how to cope with the bad winter weather. For instance, Dangerfield cites one


passenger who checked his train operator’s website which suggested a normal service pattern. He trudged two miles through thick snow to his local station and waited for an hour. No trains arrived and no information was sounded so he trudged two miles back home again through even thicker snow. ‘The operator may have had all sorts of


challenges,’ says Dangerfield. ‘But from the passenger’s perspective, an informed choice could have been made if the operator had advised, “we are extremely unlikely to be able to get you to London today.”’ Dangerfield says a full report containing


analysis of the final results will be published this autumn. The strength of such cost effective and practical online research is that passengers are in place when disruption occurs. Weaknesses relate to the accuracy of the panellists’ accounts. The research also lacks a statistical element and is wholly qualitative. Nevertheless, mystery shopping seems


set to go on exposing industry failings. Atoc says it ‘regularly carries out mystery shopping


to make sure the information provided for passengers is always improving’. Atoc points to its annual national mystery shopping survey that informs the DfT. National Rail Enquiries, which APRS


mystery shoppers said performed well, commissions a mystery shopping ‘exercise’ to test the accuracy of advice provided by its contact centre operatives. Some 4,000 calls are monitored with scenario questions on fare prices, railcards and travelcards. ‘NRE has achieved a 99 per cent success rate for the past two years,’ says an Atoc spokeswoman. ‘But if the research showed there were any areas of failure, steps would be taken to immediately remedy that.’ Generally, Atoc welcomes independent


mystery shopping feedback. ‘The valuable process determines where train companies can improve passenger services and help shape future developments,’ says the spokeswoman. ‘Train operators are always looking to keep customers happy so feedback through independent sources is very useful.’ Pearson and Passenger Focus refrain


from ‘naming and shaming’ individual Tocs exposed by mystery shopping. ‘The passenger rail industry exists to serve passengers,’ says Pearson. ‘Receiving feedback from passengers is crucial if the industry is going to deliver a service that meets its customers’ needs.’


‘Passenger Focus’s overall conclusion slammed the industry hard when the results were published in September 2008’


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Hard facts about your operation, we don’t just tick boxes SEPTEMBER 2010 PAGE 27


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