David Statham
dissatisfaction' admitted Statham, and to that end he has brought in a new performance director, ‘a guy called Richard Rowland who has come into our business to focus specifically on driving up performance.’ Working with NR, FCC is committed to giving the infrastructure owner more access to the lines to increase its reliability. ‘Take for example early on Sunday morning or late at night, we give NR a little bit of access and that’s allowed us to make some of the points on the Brighton main line more reliable. That has allowed us to take off some of the speed restrictions which means we have more chance of delivering a reliable timetable.’
‘So, the three things that we are focusing on as a business over the next twelve months are the three things our customers have told us are important.’
people. There is a way to go yet and we do need to keep adding further capacity to keep up with the growth that we and the rest of the railway are seeing. The long-term answer to that is the Thameslink programme. Last week we signed a contract with the DfT and Siemens to deliver 1,114 vehicles. Those vehicles only come in eight and twelve car lengths so we won’t be running any four-car trains once we get those new trains.’
Data mining and social media
Statham is passionate about the opportunities created by new technology and its ability to connect the company to the travelling public. ‘We have 35,000 followers on Twitter and we think that is somewhere between 20 and 25 per cent of our regular customers. Through Twitter we get, and give, really real time information to people.’ Although the company receives 50,000 letters and 25,000 phone calls every month, Statham considers Twitter use ‘by far the biggest single trend seen in the business’. FCC is investing resources in this social media platform to reach its customers in an informal way, and as such its Twitter feed is staffed 24/7 by real people who give out their names. For Statham, the portal offers a means to get real time feedback and also tell people what is actually happening with their trains when there is a disruption. ‘The more people we get to sign up to Twitter, the better,’ he said.
On top of the relationship being built between FCC and its customers via Twitter, FCC interviews in excess of 7,000 customers every year through its own customer wave monitor. It also carries out its national passenger survey every six months. Said Statham: ‘We have a huge amount of data coming in to tell us what customers think is important. We analyse all of that to make sure that what we focus on and what our highest priorities are as a business is what customers are telling us is important.’
By analysing all of those sources of data, FCC has come up
with the three key things that the company must tackle in order to secure customer retention and growth. ‘By far the biggest driver of satisfaction is the delivery of the timetable. The most important thing is that we get people to their destination on time and deliver the promise of our timetable.’ The second biggest driver of customer satisfaction is cleanliness, particularly the inside of the train. To tackle customer dissatisfaction in this area, the company has invested in more cleaning staff to clean both the interior and exterior of trains. ‘We are embarking on a deep cleaning programme across all of our fleets to give all of our trains a baseline level of clean,’ said Statham. ‘We will be steam cleaning and cleaning the upholstery on trains like the 319 that were built back in the 1980’s, and we know we need to work really hard to keep those clean compared to some of the newer ones, so we’re investing a huge amount in making sure that we provide people with a cleaner environment.’
The third big driver relates to what customers find irritating when things go wrong - and that is not giving people the right information and not managing things well when trains are disrupted. ‘That was by far the biggest driver of customer
Info-access at platform level
Statham’s technological approach to running the FCC train network is also infiltrating the platforms. Contact staff members are being issued with handheld Blackberry devices so that they are able to access real-time information from the platforms. ‘On all of our gatelines, you’ll also see that personal computers have appeared so that our staff can access real-time information at that vital point for customers.’ In July, FCC also introduced a new automated phone service to allow staff to phone a number and find out information about any issues or disruptions. Drivers are also able ring into a number and find out the cause of any disruption. 'It is all part of more enhancements to come', said Statham proudly. Encouraging interaction is the philosophy driving FCC’s focus on building relationships with customers. Statham said: ‘We already have a good number of people signed up to our free text and email alert system to promote what is happening with the train service and keep customers informed of any developments, and we're also updating that system to give multi-modal and multi-leg information to customers.’ With regards to the final driver of customer satisfaction – the provision of accurate and timely information during disruption Statham said: ‘In common with other Toc’s, we find it challenging in the first part of an incident to give people accurate information. Sometimes our customer information systems have been a little misleading in that they will say that trains are running when we know they are unlikely to come out of the depot. ‘We have a software modification – called Disruption Mode – coming in over the next few weeks that will make sure that train information only reflects trains that we know to be running and that we know the wheels are turning on. It means our information system will be much more accurate and that is something we are doing uniquely within the industry, and
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