David Statham
that means we are much less likely to give people the wrong information about a disruption,’ he added.
A bold move
Another new initiative Statham is keen to talk about is the FCC’s new passenger board - the Interchange. ‘What we have done is bring in the people who have been some of our more consistent correspondents,’ said Statham. Bravely, he invited the serial complainers to come have a go. ‘They are people who have been quite… challenging in terms of their feedback,' explained Statham diplomatically. 'We’ve held face-to-face sessions with 30 or 40 of those individuals and we do this to talk to people about what our priorities are as a business, but also to get their ideas in terms of how we can improve the service.'
Face-to-face interaction
Statham is also keen to promote the face-to-face surveying and monitoring being undertaken by FCC. The company held a Meet the Manager event from 7.30am at St Pancras Station to coincide with the morning peak in mid-July and another was scheduled for Haywards Heath across morning peak times. Statham reiterated the company’s efforts to encourage face-to- face interaction with its customer base. ‘We have moved our online forum sessions to evening times so that we are actually there when people are available to talk to us and we're making a big effort to ensure we are around and are more open and accessible to people at the times when they want to talk to us.’
Stakeholder involvement
Stakeholder meetings have been given the same treatment, said Statham. ‘Instead of standing up in front of people at stakeholder meetings for an hour and a half showing a massive set of PowerPoint slides, we’ve been involving people much more in looking at what the answers should be. ‘Stakeholder meetings are now about having focus groups to get stakeholder ideas about how we improve services and how
First Capital Connect operates trains from London to Bedford, Brighton, Wimbledon and Sutton on the Thameslink route and Peterborough, Cambridge and King’s Lynn on the Great Northern route. Around 180,000 people travel with FCC every weekday - 95,000 on Thameslink and 85,000 on Great Northern. FCC’s parent company FirstGroup is the UK’s largest rail operator, responsible for around 500 stations and carrying around 400,000 passengers every day on First train services.
we get information out to customers during a disruption or how we engage with local communities.’
Revenue protection
FCC is no stranger to customer complaints it has to be said, and I referred to a recent news story on the BBC website about allegations surrounding the misuse of discounted tickets and a complaint about over-zealous train guards. ‘We don’t have guards, we have revenue protection inspectors,’ said Statham. ‘With all our frontline staff across all of our stations and revenue protection inspectors we are half way into a big programme of training in customer service. That has been focusing on the importance of customer service and on providing people with the right information. We do give our frontline staff discretion and we support them when they make a decision on the trains. ‘We make big commitments to pay money back to the taxpayer like lots of other operators and we do have to make sure that we are protecting that revenue and that those who are travelling on the trains are paying. Not paying the full fare is not fair on the vast majority of customers who do pay.’ And what is more it makes good business sense. ‘It enables us to fund further investment in things like the upgrade programmes and improved fleets. It is important that the railway industry protects its revenue but it is also important that our staff members are seen as a customer service. If you spent some time with revenue protection inspectors like I have over the last six weeks I have been in the job, the vast majority of their interaction is about information,’ said Statham. With Statham’s hands-on approach, perhaps the million or so travellers using his trains weekly can look forward to more comfortable and efficient journeys in the future.
• October 2013 Page 53
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