With the closure of its Salisbury call centre, one of Dorset and Wiltshire’s premier bus operators no longer handles most of its customer communications. Instead, letters, emails and phonecalls regarding complaints, suggestions and non-timetable information pass to sister Go South Coast Southern Vectis in Newport, IoW. The same is true of Solent Blueline (Bluestar).
Such collaboration can lead to improved customer care and satisfaction. It can concentrate limited resources in one place. It can create a centre of excellence. It can free staff elsewhere from some of the mundane. And it’s what’s happening across greater industry. But it can also generate work as support staff pass complaints to operational teams for comment. I suppose we should be merciful the calls aren’t handled in Bangalore or Bombay, not that I have any issue with out-sourced call centres far afield—other than in bus industry terms matters are very local in nature and need a local response from someone familiar with streets, suburbs and local short cuts.
What will the staff at Newport face? Having a central clearing system enables target and performance management. Time was when bus fares might’ve been in the top three. Free travel has had a marked impact on the number of fares complaints. That weekly and longer seasons are rising at a slower rate than single & return fares is another reason why I would be surprised if fares issues top 10 or even five per cent of the total. While all other complaints might well languish down the percentage table, I’d hazard a guess that the top three complaints that surfaced would be the following, (in my order):
1. Punctuality and reliability (running on time or not running at all)
2. Driver attitude (rude, curt, blunt, ignorant, uninformed, thoughtless, neglectful)
3. Internal and external vehicle condition (cleanliness, litter, appearance, smoke inside and out, lack of low floor, perceived mechanical defects, seating issues).
The key question is, what do operators do about these issues; issues that have a knack of repeating themselves…
9 comments:
A quick review of the last twelve months shows complaints rank as follows.
1 Driver - attitude, rude, no change, etc
2 Bus failed to stop. An old chestnut which can be as a result of many reasons. Bus full, passenger not at stop, driver looking elsewhere, etc.
3 Equal between running early and running late.
4 Complaint that bus never arrived.
What do we do about it. There is a formal process with driving staff of course; however training in customer care skills does much to reduce complaints. Our driver CPC training has emphasised this and I am sure that this has contributed to a reduction in complaints. We are also fortunate in being fully staffed with a considerable waiting list of potential employees. We can now select the better candidates rather than anyone who can pass the PCV medical as has been the case in parts of the industry for a long time. This coupled with improved staff morale has undoubtably seen complaints about staff reduce.
Failure to stop is often reviewed using CCTV footage and yes at times our drivers are at fault but in the many of the cases I have viewed the complainant is no where near to a bus stop, or the bus is full.
Reliability issues are always a challenge and with main routes operating ten minute frequencies a bus a few minutes late is often percieved as the next vehicle running early.
Passenger education and information goes a long way to reduce complaints. We have two trained customer services operatives who use specialised software to record and manage complaints. Comparing the last period with the same period 12 months ago our complaints have reduced from 175 in 2008 to 78 in 2009. We must be doing something right. Question is can we keep it up? We will certainly try.
For me, the bigger issue is research that shows a very low percentage of customers with a valid complaint actually follow through and make the complaint. Big G's reduction in complaints is impressive, but how many of our customers have a bad experience and just walk away never to use our services again? Mystery traveller's experiences surely ought to be a part of every companies KPIs, to get a better assessment of how well we really are doing.
Yes we do use Mystery Shoppers as part of the process. It's difficult to describe all the measures we use in a short comment post. You are correct in that these travellers do give a true picture of your services even if only as a snapshot. Of couse getting out and about on your own buses is also a valuable way to see what is happening on the streets, so to speak.
I agree with your comment that communication between bus operator and passenger needs to be local. But moving everything to an island in the english channel is less local than it was before, and for the sake of cost I presume?
and quality, dave
It's telling that those at a head office do not consider their counterparts at more local depots qualified enough to be able to respond to individual complaints, that they take over the response.
It's nothing new. Some HQ's will claim that they're leaving local depots to operate local services for local people, as a result of them lifting their responsibility to respond to complaints.
In my experience as someone who's been part of a team who've taken on responsibility for responding to enquiries that used to be handled on a local level, is that we spend all our time contacting the local offices to query every single complaint received as our company is paranoid that we do not offer vague responses to complaints.
In my opinion, this cancels out any claim that local offices have been released from this type of work as they are contacted hourly to give us as much info as possible. As we're not *as* local, our responses, despite the interraction with local depot, are often not as accurate or specific as I know they could be.
On occasions I've not really had a clue about the response I'm given, and have resorted to simply typing out what's been dictated to me by the.... local office.
You are making assumptions that simply aren't true. All complaints are still dealt with by the local managers responsible. The centralisation of the customer services function has given quicker response times and freed up managers' time from administering complaints, allowing them to concentrate on actually resolving problems.
The pooling of resorces means that we have a dedicated fully utilised team of staff, who specialise in customer contact. They run a system that records all complaints and monitors their progress.
Certianly the depot managers I have spoken to find the system more responsive to customer needs, and the feedback from customers has been positive.
The issue really is quality of service. A call centre will generally be manned for longer hours than a dedicated depot enquiry phone, and the days when the duty inspector answered calls from the public in between his/her other duties ought to be long gone.
Operators pay for traveline to provide timetable information - for me the only odd thing with the GSC system is that customers are still given a local number to contact for lost property, rather than the call centre tracing this and then ringing the customer back.
Have you ever tried getting a good description of lost property off someone, and then managing to relay it on to someone else. It's much better to have the first hand description!!!
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