PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
Enabling innovation for customer service
The Enabling Innovation Team (EIT) has announced a competition with a prize of £1m funding available to boost innovation in customer experience in the rail industry.
Good customer service is a vital part of the rail industry, and a way for train operating companies to attract and keep passengers. The public can take a more sympathetic attitude to disruption – realising that some factors outside of operators’ control can, and do, go wrong – but only if they are given clear, honest information and are assured that work is ongoing to get their services back on track.
The EIT aims to improve the efficiency of British railways by addressing rail business challenges and to grow
worldwide opportunities for both existing and potential rail supply chain. The competition could be a huge step forward for passenger satisfaction, and drive improvements throughout the railway.
It opens to applicants in May and is developed by InnoCentive and IXC UK Limited. The aim of the competition is to identify opportunities for innovation in service culture, business process, journey planning, the whole journey experience and design of facilities.
David Clarke, director of EIT, said: “The rail industry constantly strives to improve the customer experience, but there is always scope to do more.
“We want to use this competition to showcase
successful ideas and approaches from other customer service
sectors
and create the environment where the best of these ideas can be brought into the rail industry.”
Jonathan Slater, director at InnoCentive added: “Through InnoCentive’s proven track record of designing and managing large- scale prize competitions and InnovationXchange’s network for connecting to the right people, the Customer Experience Competition
will enable
innovators to provide creative new technologies to solve today’s rail challenges.”
The contract for running the competition and the competition
prize fund are funded from the Pilot Rail Innovation Fund, which is managed by the EIT on behalf of the rail industry.
The scope of the competition is being developed with a range of industry stakeholders and has been designed to complement the Technology Strategy Board (TSB)’s Digital Railway competition. An initial stakeholder workshop held in February identified the broad challenge themes, which focus on delivering improvements for regular and commuter passengers, discretionary and potential new passengers and freight customers.
£1.8m contract for East Coast catering payment service
East Coast has awarded a £1.8m contract to ECR Retail Systems to provide a new payment service for the next five years.
Staff will receive devices to conduct catering transactions by credit or debit card. 140 handheld devices and 60 tablets will be delivered on 46 East Coast trains, replacing the existing system
which has been in place for the past eight years.
The new system is PCI compliant to ensure the security of customers’ transactional data. Payments can be processed both online and offline and can link to head office systems to allow transactions and stock control to be tracked in real time.
Simon Pont, CEO, ECR Retail Systems, said: “East Coast was impressed with the service we deliver for Irish Rail and we’re delighted we can roll out our technology to its on-board catering staff. The fact that the system has been certified 100% PCI compliant is a coup and means passengers can make payments safe in the knowledge
their card details are secure.”
Alan Sherwen, IS manager, East Coast, added: “Customer service is important to East Coast staff and our passengers.
“ECR’s solution is unique, efficient and secure: three things that were paramount as we went through the tendering process.”
236 | rail technology magazine Apr/May 13
© Alvey and Towers
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