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National Rail Enquiries Spring 2010
Like you, we facedmajor challenges in
January from the extendedperiod of snow – just threeweeks after the last one.
The team at NRE respondedvery quickly and in addition to the normal service set up a disruption ‘hotline’,which provided callers withconstantly updatedinformation about the statusof all TOC services. Heavilypromoted in the media, theservice took over 10k calls inthe 1st hour, with over aquarter of a million callsreceived in the eight days itwas in operation.
The new website launchedin December did haveteething problems on some ofits 16,000 pages. These havenow been fixed and we willsoon be launching our nextbatch of improvements.
And, although the year hasonly just started we have wonan award. Stations MadeEasy provides individual
maps showing facilities for all2,500 National Rail stations.Its success was acknow-ledged at the recent NationalCycle Rail Awards.
I would like to extend thanksto all those who worked withus to make 2009-10 such asuccess. A list of NRE’sachievements is summarisedon the back page, as are ourplans for 2010-11.
It will be a year of improvingthe customer experience andproviding consistency ofinformation forpassengers.
Chris ScogginsChief [email protected]
2010–11 will be a year ofimproving customerexperience and providingconsistency of informationfor passengers
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enquirer
Single data feed set toimprove CIS nationallyA
drive to improve accuracy ofpassenger information is oneof a series of initiatives aimedat improving performance
during disruption to train servicesbeing overseen by the National TaskForce (NTF), which involves theDepartment for Transport, Office ofRail Regulation, Network Rail,Association of Train OperatingCompanies, TOC owning groups,and freight operators.
The passenger information part ofthe project is being led by JasonDurk, NRE’s Head of PassengerInformation, who explains: “NTF wasset up five years ago to tackle per-formance issues. Performance isactually improving, but the provisionof good quality passenger informa-tion remains a big issue when thingsgo wrong and, as an industry, itneeds to be addressed.”
This was underscored by recentresearch published by PassengerFocus, the official consumer body –although the decision to make bigimprovements was taken before publication of the last NationalPassenger Survey, in which only 36per cent of rail passengers said theywere satisfied with how well theirtrain company handled delays.
“What continues to annoy passen-gers is the way delays are managedby the industry and a poor perform-ance in this area often results in pas-sengers reporting greater dissatisfac-tion with the train company,” saidPassenger Focus.
Anna Walker, who chairs the Officeof Rail Regulation, said: “Passengershave sent the rail industry a clearmessage that there is significant
room for improvement.”According to Jason Durk, the
problems are caused by informationflows within the industry, often withdifferent TOCs having different pro-cedures or, for example, uploadingan amended timetable to TRUST butnot into the Train Service Data Base.
“Having 66 different installations of Customer Information Systemsacross the network plays its part inthe poor quality message to the cus-tomer, and fundamentally under-mines the provision of the accurateand consistent information they needwhen disruption occurs. We aim toaddress this.”
As we reported in the last editionof Enquirer, NRE’s information sys-tem ‘Darwin’ now has the ability to
pinpoint accurately the whereaboutsof trains as they travel on the net-work, providing a significant boost inaccuracy of forecasts for customerswaiting at, or en route to, stations.
Using Darwin to keep customerinformation systems up to date willmean that when details of contin-gency plans, or changes to them, areinput to Darwin by a train operator,all stations served by that TOC’strains will display more accurateinformation, irrespective of which rail operators manage each individual station.
For example, CrossCountry –which operates no stations at all –will be able to input up-to-datedetails of service alterations or con-tingency plans and be guaranteed
the correct information will be dis-played at any station at which itstrains call.
The project will also mean an endto circumstances – commonly com-plained of by passengers – wheretrains are shown to be running ontime when they are in fact late oreven cancelled.
But these problems will be largelyovercome by driving all stationCustomer Information Systems (CIS)from Darwin.
“A few years ago, when seriousdisruptions occurred, the train com-panies often turned CIS screens offand showed no information all,” saysJason Durk. “But now we are movingthe industry to a position where wewill be able to show as much infor-mation as possible, and which is asaccurate as possible.”
Network Rail recently approvedfunding for Phase 1 of a programmeto roll out Darwin as a national CISfeed. The first phase will see the CISat all 17 Virgin Trains’ stations fedwith real time information directlyfrom Darwin – providing a significantchange to the way that information isprovided on the West Coast.
In coming months, work to inter-face the Virgin systems with Darwinwill be undertaken by Thales andAmey with the aim of feeding the 17CIS locations directly from Darwin byNovember this year. And by the endof 2013 the aim is for all real timeinformation, including the remaining49 CIS installations around the net-work, to be generated from the onesource.� NRE’s ongoing developments toimprove its systems – see page 2.
“We are moving the industry to a position wherewe will be able to show as much information aspossible, and which is as accurate as possible”Jason Durk, Head of Passenger Information
enquirer
FRIENDLY rivalry between National Rail Enquiries’ two con-tact centres, based in Mumbai and Delhi, continues toensure high levels of service to rail customers by maintainingcustomer satisfaction and call accuracy.
The second contact centre in New Delhi went ‘live’ on 19October last year, having been set up – including staffrecruitment and training – in only four months. The Delhiramp-up was a phased approach over October to midJanuary, starting with 10 per cent of total calls and endingwith 50 per cent of total calls – an average increase of 12-15advisors going live each week.
The quick and smooth start-up was assisted by a numberof secondments from NRE’s contact centre in Mumbai, and16 of the Mumbai staff have now moved permanently to thenew centre in Delhi.
Both centres are operated by the same company, IntelenetGlobal Services, partners of NRE for over five years.
“We are treating Mumbai and Delhi as two independentcontact centre providers,” says Tejpal Singh, NRE’s Head ofContact Centres.
“For business continuity, everything is separate andresilient at each location. There are no interdependenciesbetween them at all.
“As a result, there is a friendly rivalry between staff at thetwo sites.”
The Delhi centre is already handling 50 per cent of all tele-phone calls, despite being open for only 17 hours each day– the Mumbai centre is open 24 hours per day, 7 days perweek, 364 days a year.
Tejpal Singh says the call quality and customer satisfac-tion achieved continues to be the same high level as previ-ously recorded in the UK.
National Rail Enquiries is imple-menting a series of actions toimprove its own systems fol-lowing the lessons learned
from last January’s snow storms.Jason Durk, Head of Passenger
Information, said the aim was toanswer three key questions:1. What would be done differently if itsnows again? 2. What more must be done beforenext winter?3. What more can be achieved duringthe remainder of the Rail Regulator’scontrol period 4, which extends toMarch 2014?
Among the actions being taken, the
resilience of NRE’s Darwin computersystem will be further improved, in-cluding increased bandwidth and theintroduction of a ‘full disaster recoveryconfiguration.’
On the NRE website, a colour-codedNational Service Indicator should beintroduced in May this year and allwork to fix capacity issues is to be vali-dated by independent consultants thissummer. Also by the end of May, allTOCs should have generic disruptionurls in place to make it easier to com-municate website addresses. And, inthe autumn, service level agreementsshould be concluded between TOCsand NRE to standardise and formalise
timelines and quality of informationbetween all parties.
Before the end of 2010, any out-standing issues regarding resilience ofTOC websites should be fixed – andDarwin workstations will be available inall train operating companies for usewhen amendments and/or cancella-tions to planned train services are toodemanding to be handled through theTyrell system.
By September next year, NRE’s RealTime Journey Planner should be drivendirectly by Darwin and, by the end of2011, the aim is that all train operatingcompanies will take their disruptioninformation centrally from NRE, further
improving consistency.And, in future, in serious disruptions,
with on-going delays the system willnot forecast train operations beyond an hour ahead.
Customer information will also beboosted during serious disruptions byactivation of a dedicated ‘hot line’ firstintroduced by the Contact Centre Teamlast January when snow falls disruptedservices. During that period over10,000 calls were made in the first hourto information recorded by the NationalRail Communications Centre – and overa quarter of a million calls werereceived during the service’s eight daysof operation.
Disruption info boostedby NRE developments
A group of staffat the Delhicontact centreand (below)some of their'friendly rivals'in Mumbai.
JONATHAN Chong has joined NRE’steam as Web Development Manager. Hehas a wealth of experience in web devel-opment and worked previously in thefinance industry. Jonathan will be lookinginto how NRE can best use new tech-nologies and take the website forward.One of the latest NRE innovations is a‘Visit a Friend’ application now availableon social media site Facebook. Theapplication enables users to plan jour-neys and share travel details with theirfriends — as shown by Jonathan below.
New web wizard joins NRE
Centres’ friendly rivalryfor customer satisfaction
Picture: Phil Caley
NATIONAL Rail Enquiries’ websitewas re-launched at the end of 2009with a new, user-friendly design.
As one of the most-used websitesin the UK, the new look has receiveda lot of attention and reviews. Mosthave been “resoundingly positive”,says NRE, with a consistent theme ofpraising the site for its improvementover the previous version, citing itsclean look, ease of use, simplifiednavigation and speed.
Here is a selection from recentreviews.
Webuser Magazine ‘Therefreshed website is now much lessfrustrating to use. Start and destina-tion fields now auto-complete, forinstance, and click-throughs are pro-vided to vendors selling journey tick-ets. There are other welcome touchestoo, such as the ability to generateweek-long ‘pocket timetables’ (in PDFformat) of any chosen journey.’
Planet Anarky ‘This is a realimprovement. I used the old site foryears, and this is definitely a relaunchto be proud of.’
The New Marketing‘www.nationalrail.co.uk works on prin-ciples that most consumer and retailsites should aspire to.’
eConsultancy ‘National RailEnquiries relaunched its website . . .giving the site a much neededmakeover. The site was redesigned
by Fortune Cookie, and at firstglance, seems to be a massiveimprovement on the old version witha fresher, cleaner look.
The site doesn’t actually sell tick-ets, but you can get price information,and will show the cheapest ticket forthe journey, and send you to the railoperator’s or a third party site such asthetrainline to place an order. . . I likethe new site a lot more than the previ-ous incarnation, which was due anupdate. It is clearer and easier to use,and even with the heavy load on theservers, it works quickly enough.
The functions of the site are clear,navigation has been much simplified,and the overall look and feel is a bigimprovement.’
Andy Kinsey ‘This site has finallycome of age – offering the same serv-ices in a newly formatted way clearlyworks. Right down to the details ofthe clock in the top right hand corner,this is a superb redesign and manycould learn from the idea of Simple is Best.’
About.com ‘The new-lookNational Rail Enquiries website is agreat improvement in both appear-ance and utility.
It has always been useful, but inthe past it was a bit of a dog’s dinnerto look at, confusing and difficult touse. But take a look at National RailEnquiries now. Everything is organ-ised to make it easy for you to getdetails of train journeys, find thecheapestfares and buy your tickets.
There are a lot more functions,including the Stations Made Easyweb tool, which have all been stream-lined and made easy to navigate anduse.’
Tnooz ‘Web design agencyFortune Cookie has unveiled thelong-awaited overhaul of the UK’sleading train planning website.
Fortune Cookie has completelyredesigned the user interface . . .Fortune Cookie says the project is thebiggest the agency has undertaken inits history, eclipsing its other high pro-file work in the travel sector for touroperating firm Kuoni.’
www.nationalrail.co.uk � TrainTracker™: 0871 200 49 50 � TrainTracker™ Text – text station name to: 8 49 50 � National Rail Enquiries: 08457 48 49 50
Crack team brings high-speed turnaround to Help Point callsA GROWING source of activity for National Rail Enquiries is dealing with calls from Help Points at stations around theBritish network.
Head of Contact Centres Tejpal Singh says Help Points hadpreviously been installed at many stations with good intent.“However, because of the unpredictability of the call volumesand the time range of the calls they became difficult for theTOCs to handle,’’ he explains.
“Now we have a crack, dedicated team of people inMumbai to take calls around the clock. We get around 10,000calls every week, all of which we aim to answer within 10 to 15 seconds.”
The team has been developed since NRE undertook a trialproject, answering calls from 150 Help Points at First GreatWestern stations.
Now seven more TOCs have commissioned NRE to handletheir Help Point calls – Arriva Trains Wales, East MidlandsTrains, First Capital Connect, National Express East Anglia,Northern, Southeastern and, most recently, London Midland.
In addition, South West Trains diverts Help Point calls fromits stations to NRE as an overflow during periods of highactivity due to disruption or because of major events, such asa rugby international at Twickenham.
At the contact centre in Mumbai, Reema Seth leads theteam of 20 specially-selected advisors who handle calls fromHelp Points.
Five or six of the team are on duty at any one time, Reemaexplained. “Most calls are about the whereabouts of the nexttrain. But we do get some threatening calls occasionally.
“Some callers threaten to damage property or to jump on
the track. The difficult calls tend to come late at night and at weekends.”
All calls are recorded and if a threat is of sufficient concern,the Mumbai team have a hot line to advise British TransportPolice and to alert Shiona Naylor, NRE’s Customer RelationsManager.
Mumbai’s Help Point team members must have alreadyspent at least a year working as an advisor, taking calls fromrail customers.
Selection is also based on their ability to empathise withcallers and their knowledge of each TOC’s products, its routesand local geography, says Reema.
Above: Members of the Help Point staff in Mumbai with Team Leader Reema Seth third from right.
From April2010, theNRE LiveDepartureBoards areawill becolour-washed inline with therest of thenew website.
Website redesign wins wide praise
Stations Made Easy app wins‘most innovative’ rail awardTHE Stations Made Easy application, launched last autumn, has madeNational Rail Enquiries and the Association of Train Operating Companies’Disability and Inclusion Team the winners in this year’s National Cycle RailAwards.
The award, presented at the Houses of Parliament by cycling fan andtransport journalist Christian Wolmar, is for the ‘most innovative approachto cycle-rail integration’.
Stations Made Easy, which is accessed on the NRE website, provides aninteractive map of each of the 2,500-plus National Rail stations, showingthe stairs, doors, lifts and other objects that may need to be negotiatedwhen moving around a station.
Central to the application was the massive job of auditing over 2,500stations and taking over 1.4 million photographs.
From left: NRE’s Maria Mlynarska with Christian Wolmar,John Horncastle of ATOC and NRE’s Head of OnlineServices Jason Webb at the rail awards ceremony.
National Rail EnquiriesChris Scoggins, Chief Executive 020 7841 8028 Email: [email protected]
Tejpal Singh, Head of Contact Centres 020 7841 8132 Email: [email protected]
Jason Webb, Head of Online Services 07824 410 422 Email: [email protected]
Jason Durk, Head of Passenger Information 07767 644 659 Email: [email protected]
enquirer editorial Railnews 01438 310 011 Email: [email protected]
Eden Media 020 8334 0909 Email: [email protected]
Contacts
www.nationalrail.co.uk
THE last twelve months have seenrecord achievements for National RailEnquiries, with a company-wideexpansion of our services and aseries of successful initiativesdesigned to push up real-time accura-cy and also drive down running costs. The result has been a list of goalsachieved and new standards set.They are as follows:
1. NRE £2m below budget. NRE further reduced its running costswhilst increasing the overall numberof contacts. Over the past eight yearswe have reduced our costs by nearly70% whilst more than tripling thenumber of contacts we handle.
2. Over 250 services to 45 clients. Many NRE services are available forother rail companies to rebrand andrun as their own – the Live DepartureBoards is one of our most used,appearing on 15 TOC websites. Wecurrently provide over 250 of theseservices to 45 train operating com-panies and third party clients to helpprovide consistent information acrossall channels.
3. Contact Centre migration:Customer Satisfaction maintained.The NRE team successfully managedthe transition of 100% of calls to theirpartner’s operations in Delhi andMumbai, setting up the new site inDelhi in just four months and deliver-ing the whole project early and belowbudget. Just as importantly, customersatisfaction stayed at its customaryhigh level throughout.
4. Help Points team answering 10kcalls per week. A dedicated team inour Mumbai contact centre nowanswers 10,000 station Help Pointcalls per week on behalf of nine trainoper-ating companies. The transitionto NRE has greatly improved the serv-ice, allowing TOC control room staffto concentrate on train running.
5. Disruption Hotline. During thesevere snow disruption in January
NRE set up a recorded informationhelpline to provide constantly updatedinformation about the status of eachTOC’s services and with the capacityto handle 10,000 simultaneous calls.The Hotline was heavily promoted bythe media and answered over a quar-ter of a million calls during the periodof disruption.
6. Recorded messaging boosted bynew telephony platform. In April thecontact centre service moved to a newtelephone network supplier, providingenhanced functionality for recordedmessage provision, allowing callers amultitude of onward routing options.
7. New website. Our new website,built using sophisticated researchtechniques and based on customerfeedback, was launched in December.Simplicity and an intuitive design areat the heart of the new site, and havedriven usage of features like CheapestFare Finder to increase by over 300%.
8. Mobile applications. Mobile jour-ney planning and live departure boardapplications for Google Android,Orange and the iPhone were devel-oped in conjunction with a number ofpartners. The iPhone application wonMobile Project of the Year at the UKIT industry awards.
9. Darwin TD feeds and heuristics. A new real-time prediction engine was
developed that now also uses TrainDescriber information to provide richand granular information across therail network. We also developedheuristic algorithms so the systemcan learn from previous train move-ments, further improving the accuracyof our predictions.
10. Agreement to use Darwin tofeed all CIS. The industry’s focus onimproving passenger information dur-ing disruption has led to a collectiveagreement to improve the consistencyof the information at stations. This willhappen by feeding existing CIS withdata from Darwin.
11. Stations Made Easy. NRE’s newinteractive tool allows customers toplan step free access around stations.Customers can also view schematicmaps and detailed accessibility infor-mation for each station. In total, over1 million photographs help to powerthe application.
12. Twitter/Facebook application.We have extended the reach of NREservices through a variety of socialmedia channels, including Twitter,providing disruption messages, aChief Executive’s blog and the launchof a Facebook ‘Visit a friend’ toolwhich is designed to help people mapout train journeys when travelling tovisit friends.
enquirer
Channel 4 documentary brings wave of support from viewersBy Rob Capener, Railway Children’s Head of Communications
FOLLOWING all the national press coverageabout Railway Children on the release ofSlumdog Millionaire in 2008, we wereapproached by a film company called TrueVision who work on behalf of Channel 4 tofilm the ‘Dispatches’ documentary series.
True Vision contacted us for more informa-tion as they were looking to produce a docu-mentary entitled ‘The Slumdog Children ofMumbai’. We assisted with their researchand set up a visit to Railway Children in Indiafor the producer.
The film was broadcast by Channel 4 at9pm on 21 January 2010. Channel 4 alsoheld a preview at the Royal Society of Arts inLondon, which included a panel session that
was later featured on the Channel 4 News.The panel included the film’s director, its pro-ducer, a senior representative from PlanInternational and the news presenter.Mrinalini, our Programme Director for India,represented Railway Children.
We are over the moon at this fantasticrecognition of our work. The broadcast,which was watched by over two million view-ers, resulted in an instant and overwhelmingresponse to the children’s need.
As a result, we’ve received over £2,000 inone-off donations and gained 124 new regu-lar donors. Regular donors are particularlygood news for us, because they provideongoing, sustainable income that allows usto plan for the future. The money we’llreceive from our new regular donors willindefinitely sustain the activities of one of our
partners who help to support the homelesschildren we represent.
If you’re one of our new donors, we’d liketo thank you for your support. If you’re not aregular donor, but would like to become one,please go to our website where you can findout how to set up a monthly donation.
If you missed the Dispatches film onChannel 4, you can still catch it by going toour website and clicking on the link.
The Railway Children website is at www.railwaychildren.org.uk
Our targets forthe year ahead...NATIONAL Rail Enquiries has seven key initiatives for the year 2010-11.
� Information at stations will be upgraded by the rollout of Darwin asthe one national feed of data to CIS screens. This will significantlyreduce TOC and Network Rail costs and improve the quality ofinformation for customers and staff. The coming year will see Phase 1cover all Virgin stations in Q3 and the start of the next tranche ofstations.
� NRE will lead the zoning of information at stations to improvepassenger information and make it easier to locate. During the yearall stations will be surveyed to define the zones and the team willwork on the creation of the onward travel posters.
� NRE will introduce in Q2 a colour-coded National Service Indicatorto show at a glance which TOCs are affected by serious disruptionand which are running normally.
� NRE will further improve customer experience in the contactcentres through trialling the ‘warm transfer’ of sales leads to TOCtelesales in Q2, and through introducing skill-based call routing in Q3.
� NRE will deliver new functionality to the website to drive up ticketsales by showing the fare for every journey requested from Q4.
� NRE will make rail more accessible to infrequent travellers throughenabling those unfamiliar with the stations that serve theirdestinations to journey plan using postcodes rather than stationnames.
� In Q4, NRE will enhance its services involving travel to London byenabling customers to plan journeys into London directly to any Zone1 LUL station – by mobile phone or online – and by improving thevisibility of Oyster travelcards on its website.
A benchmark for achievement
The steady reduction in NRE’s operating costs is shown above in blue,compared with the inexorable increase (red line) in total contacts.
