Customer Service – Page 2 – Mike's Twitter Overflow

Virgin on the inedible

In the glory days of the railway, the British Rail restaurant car breakfast was something of a treat. Cereals, toast, juice, and full English – offered to you “service Anglaise” from a tray, so you could get what you wished. They even had kippers.

Even despite “modernisation” of the BR buffet car under InterCity in the 1980s and early 90s – think along the lines of moving away from Mr Kipling cakes and Maxpax coffee to croissants and the chewy microwaved burger – the Great British breakfast was left well alone, lest the Great British businessman kick up a stink…

Retro BR breakfast service complete with retro hairstyle... — The hair is a dead giveaway as to which era this BR breakfast belongs! *Photo: NRM*

For a while, this even survived into privatisation, most notably perpetuated by the late GNER: “Great” for so many reasons, and not just the fact that even when travelling in the cheap seats one could still sit in the restaurant car and eat real food at 100mph-plus, as I often did.

Where freshly cooked food is still available on British trains, the current trend is a move away from the classic restaurant car to an at-seat service for 1st Class passengers only, called “complimentary” by the train companies, as opposed to inclusive, so they are able to weasel their way out if the service can’t be provided as advertised. Generally, this service includes a cooked breakfast, light food across the day and sometimes a cooked evening meal, which is what Virgin Trains provide on their routes out of London.

I’d recently travelled from London up to the Northwest, and by a quirk of the UK railway fares structure, it was one of those trips where by booking in advance, it was cheaper to go 1st Class as opposed to Standard. “Great”, I think, it’s a train where they serve breakfast, and while I didn’t expect it to be anywhere near as good as in days of yore (as they never are!), I’ll happily admit to looking forward to it.

I’d not travelled VT’s 1st Class where they served hot breakfast in a while (about 3 or 4 years, I think), and the last time I should have had a VT breakfast, it wasn’t available, which meant I was kind of hoping for more success this time.

So, you can imagine my disappointment when I was offered “the last rasher of bacon”, which was overdone to the extent of being tooth-breakingly crispy – you couldn’t get a fork in it, a “grilled” tomato almost reduced to mush, some overdone black pudding, a dry-looking hash brown, and a rubber egg. I took one bite, and pushed the plate away, but not before I got a pic of it, so disappointed to be served such obviously second-rate tosh…

“No more bacon…”, I was told. It seems that the people sat further up from me could only be offered similarly incinerated sausage. I asked one of the crew to take it away, and I tweeted the above pic to VT’s (excellent) Twitter desk, to see what they had to say…

Either my rejection of the burnt offerings, or the message to the Twitter desk, got someone’s attention, as a few minutes later, this arrived…

“No more bacon”, apparently. Hmm. I didn’t notice us stop to pick some up, either.

But, nice save of face by the crew in the end, though the sad thing is that I had to complain before something was done. Really, that overcooked stuff shouldn’t have been served in the first place. Surely the person with the tray noticed what she had was burned? Wasn’t she ashamed to serve it?

This isn’t the only beef about the alleged “1st Class” service offered on that train. Things could have been done with a bit more style, and thought for the passenger.

For instance, there seemed to be an assumption by the crew that people sat in 1st Class knew what was on offer, and what to ask for. There were no menu cards, and no explanation offered about what was available.

One of the crew members walked past with a closed up solid-sided trolley (like an airline food trolley) mumbling “Anything from the snack trolley?” – wouldn’t this have been better if the trolley was more open plan so we could see what was available, or if the person had told us what they had inside the trolley?

Later in the journey, between Crewe and Warrington (and by this point, we were 30 minutes late because of a signalling problem near Stafford), the crew were starting to collect cups and things in, it looked like they would change catering crew at Preston so they were clearing away, and putting out fresh cups, etc.

At no point did anyone ask “May I clear away?”, or “Can I get you anything else?” – your place setting was just cleared away, seemingly with an unspoken message of “Right then, that’s all you’re getting”.

Unfortunately the train then ran into more trouble between Warrington and Preston (faulty windscreen wipers on the North end cab, beaten into submission by the relentless Northern rain, it seems). Initially, the train was going to be reversed by manoeuvring around a triangle of junctions (for North American readers, you’ll know this as a “wye”) just south of Wigan, so the good cab would be on the “correct” end of the train for continuing toward Glasgow. That would have taken another 30-40 minutes. Eventually, after some dithering, this reversal was abandoned and the train continued to Preston and terminated there, an hour late, where it could be swapped with another Pendolino.

By this point, after a 30 minute-plus delay, passengers in Standard are entitled to certain complimentary things (water, tea, coffee, until it runs out) from the Shop. Were those of us seated in the “good seats” taken care of during this period? Unfortunately not. Laying on some tea and coffee would have been fairly simple, and would have given the impression that our custom mattered to Virgin Trains, but it didn’t happen.

You’ve got to question why this is? Are some Virgin Trains’ staff feeling undervalued and demotivated? Uncertain of the future following the franchising fiasco? Or poorly selected and trained? Or simply only allowed to follow the prescribed service, bound by process and discouraged from using initiative?

Maybe it was summed up by a nearby passenger who said to me “If you think that breakfast was bad, you should try the evening meal. East Coast have better food.”

Are us Brits too backward about coming forward? Or is the fact that it is “complimentary” somehow meant to remove expectations of a decent service?

People petitioned hard for a rethink for Virgin to retain the West Coast franchise back in the summer. I agreed that this was the sensible thing to do, especially once the previous franchise process was declared invalid, it made sense to let Virgin continue. Now that’s happened, you’d think they would be wanting to reward passengers for showing such faith in them, and that the support was well earned, right?

Virgin’s basic railway product out of Euston isn’t horrific, with frequent trains and quick journey times (when it’s not blighted by engineering work), but with a little more attention to detail and some effort (and lining the seats up with the windows!), couldn’t it be really, really great?

Disclaimer: I should probably note that I am an ex-UK railway employee, having worked for BR in 1994/1995. That means I’m used to the consequences of disruption, but it’s how you handle it that makes the difference. Note that I pay full price for my tickets these days, this one included.

Customer Service is Crucial

When I need to get a memory upgrade for one of my own machines or for someone I know, I tend to go straight to Crucial. I usually don’t even bother looking anywhere else anymore. Thats where I went on Monday evening to order an upgrade for one of my machines.

Why? Well, partly because I’m lazy. Partly because I’m a man, and I mostly hate shopping. Even online.

But most of all, there’s a positive reason I’ll go back to Crucial. I’ve never been unhappy with their products or service, I’ve never had to return anything, they are competitively priced, and they always deliver things when they say they will, or do even better!

That memory upgrade I ordered on Monday night? I decided I’d pay the extra couple of quid to get it sent more quickly than their 3-5 day free standard postal delivery. I got an email yesterday, early evening, confirming my memory had been dispatched, and with a tracking number.

It arrived at about 0830 this morning, by Royal Mail Special Delivery, which costs us mere mortals about £6 if we go and send anything SD ourselves from the post office. Fantastic.

I know, I’m waxing lyrical about a company just going about it’s business of delivering the service and product I’ve paid for. But when you hear so often about companies who can’t keep their promises, it’s great when you find one that consistently can.

This Mac is much happier now, and I’m seeing fewer spinny beachballs.

When your staff are your best asset…

All stop on the West Coast yesterday, as a mahoosive signal failure at the important Motherwell signalling centre brought everything to a stand between the Scottish Border and Glasgow and Edinburgh. A number of people were stuck on trains in the affected area, which were unable to move for as long as three hours. Other trains were held at the station stop prior to entering the affected area, such as Carlisle.

One of the stuck people was comedienne Janey Godley, who appeared to be slowly losing her mind despite travelling in First Class, and tried to open up a 140 character at a time dialogue with the @virgintrains twitter person.

Eventually things got on the move again, and while Janey had to settle for sausages as opposed to “sex and mince”, today she did point out the kindness of the on-train crew toward the passengers during the extended delay…

Nicely done by the Virgin Trains’ On-Train staff, who seemed to put a human face on the extended delay. Good to see that staff morale is still relatively high despite the ongoing wrangling over the franchise. Talking of which…

As Virgin Rail Group has applied for a judicial review of the DfT decision to award the “ICWC” franchise to First Group, this has brought the franchise handover date itself of 9th December into question.

We’ve got the Branson offer to continue to run the franchise on a non-profit basis (donating profits to good causes) while the review proceeds.

However, the other option is that the DfT take control of the franchise until such time as it can be awarded and smooth transfer of responsibility can happen, not dissimilar as they had to do with East Coast.

But, ask yourself, is it a good use of public funds to incorporate a new entity to run ICWC on an interim basis (this includes hiring management, etc.), rather than accept Virgin’s offer to keep things on an even keel until a decision can be made.

As long as the VRG offer can be taken on a non-prejudicial basis, could this be delivering best value for the taxpayer?

In any case, spare a thought for the staff caught up in this…

What is it with the Virgin Brand?

Or “Why it’s easy to pick fault with Virgin Group companies“.

You may have noticed that I’ve recently been airing my opinion – or is it pent-up frustration – on the service that Virgin Trains provides on the UK’s West Coast Mainline out of Euston station in London. I long ago gave up trying to interact with their customer relations department about their failure to deliver either a promised element of their product, or sometimes what should be just their basic service – a comfortable journey from A to B.

It got me thinking about the wider point of why people seem easily dissatisfied with a service, and specifically Virgin Group as a whole, trains, planes, phones, tv, internet access, etc. A couple of quick searches, especially on social media, and it’s easy to find people going full tilt hating on Virgin Trains, dishing out brickbats to Virgin Media about busted broadband, or flying off the handle about the run-down (thankfully soon to be updated) Gatwick fleet on Virgin Atlantic.

The crux I’ve arrived at is that the Virgin brand tends to overpromise through it’s marketing and brand image and therefore sets itself up to underdeliver and disappoint.

Let’s look at the key connotations of the Virgin brand: Continue reading “What is it with the Virgin Brand?”

Bit windy out! Using social media for good…

Unless you’ve been living below ground for the last 24 hours, those of you in the UK can’t have helped notice it’s a bit windy out.

This sort of severe weather inevitably brings disruption, but I’ve been heartened to see a number of organisations using social media to spread the word quickly.

The social media folks @VirginTrains, Amy & Ste, have been doing a great job of relaying information out via Twitter, especially regarding heavily disrupted services into Scotland. Behind the scenes Virgin has been leading the UK rail industry on a project to improve the flow of information to passengers during disruption, and from what I’ve seen today, it seems to be working really well.

They are clearly providing a bi-directional conduit for information – they are getting their info from regular incident update calls (which should happen every 20 minutes, apparently), and direct from their route control, which means the information is very fresh, rather than out of date, which has classically been the normal complaint if you were to phone National Rail Enquiries.

What is missing is a copy of the Twitter feed on the Virgin Trains website – there’s currently no realtime information about the state of their service today provided on their website, no banner saying, “It is windy. Stuff is broken. Please check before you travel.” It is relatively trivial to embed an “alert bar” and/or a Twitter feed into a webpage, and would help those who happen to not use Twitter.

Also worthy mentions to @HeathrowAirport and @LondonCityAir(port) who have been using The Force for good today, providing regular updates about issues with travel to LHR due to a fallen tree on the Piccadilly Line, and to LCY due to an earlier meltdown on the DLR and the high winds making landing and taking off a challenge for the pilots on the smaller planes which fly to London City.

The main thing I think the LCY Twitter folks could do better right now is actually give more info about what is/isn’t cancelled – rather than “contact your airline” which sort of smacks of “not our problem”, even if that’s not the sentiment.

Ah well, wind has picked up again and the sideways rain has returned. I’ll see if I can spy an ark coming down the street.

What’s wrong with VT’s at-seat 1st Class Service?

Following on from Why the Virgin Trains Pendolino is fail…, someone asked me what was actually wrong with the onboard 1st Class service. They didn’t share my negative impression of it, and had experienced, by all accounts, some enjoyable breakfasts. I think they have been incredibly fortunate, compared to my personal experience.

Firstly, there’s the token “weekend” 1st Class service… Continue reading “What’s wrong with VT’s at-seat 1st Class Service?”

The Asshole Effect

Sort of a follow-up to my post on “How to Reset a Broken Culture?”, I was recently directed to this great blog post on the “Asshole Effect” – which promotes the maxim that, basically, really successful companies don’t employ assholes.

It brought a smile to my face. Particularly the multiplication effect of having hired one idiot, you’ll end up with more, so you want to avoid hiring any in the first place, if at all possible.

So maybe this is the way to fix a broken culture? Systematically purge the organisation of the people who are dragging it down, starting at the top.

I guess the question here is can your already battered brand withstand the short-term unrest in the time it takes to purge the non-desireables from your employ?

It’s an interesting theory. Would love to see it in practice.

Virgin Atlantic launches “all new” Economy service

I saw that Virgin Atlantic have today launched a new Economy inflight service – their “best ever”, so they say. There is a shiny video online.

Call me a sceptic that belongs in an episode of “Grumpy Old Men“, but I can’t really see much from the promotional video that makes me think “Wow”:

The branding and packaging has changed – all part of marketing the product to the customer
It still features that kiddies’ tea party sized “mini-loaf” of bread that I remember from my first VS flight years ago
It still contains some classic Virgin touches like mid-flight ice-cream, now served from a cutesy usherette tray
The coffee/tea cups seem smaller than before, but serving dessert with coffee/tea seems a good move, having eaten my dessert and then waited ages for coffee.
The menu cards have returned (Virgin took them away early in the 2000’s as a cost-cutting measure)
Is the new lightweight tray, with it’s little indentations, meant to remind you of being at primary school?
Along with the new space-saving and lighter tray, there seems to be a reduction in some pre-packaged optional items, which is a plus – ever thought about how many packets of unasked for sugar airlines throw away each year?
But, they still use those woeful “Dairystix” pre-packed milk tubes – a triumph of packaging design that allows you to spill weird-tasting milk over your neighbour or, if you’re really unlucky, yourself. What about a milk jug?
It looks like afternoon tea-type second services are making a comeback, having been heavily pared back in the last decade.
But the vtravelled blog article says that “on shorter flights, you will get a light meal like high-tea” – does that mean no main meal at all on some sectors?
We don’t get to see what’s inside the shiny new packages – is it still the same iffy food that was always there before?

It’s good to see Virgin reinstating some elements of the service which were taken away in cuts of the last decade, and the weight-saving and waste-reducing features deserve applauding, but “all new” and “best ever” seems to be on the verge of overstating things. If they really meant to show how good this new service was, perhaps they wouldn’t be afraid to show us what we could expect inside the boxes.

Unless it really is yet another watery, drippy, lasagne, (or the ever dreary, ever present anaemic sausage and cement mash) in which case I wouldn’t blame them at all.

Postscript:

About an hour or two after publishing this blog post, I got the following email from Virgin Atlantic…

We’d like your feedback

Dear Customer,

In an effort to better understand our customers and improve our services at Virgin Atlantic, we are seeking to gain feedback about our customers’ use of social networking sites, particularly Facebook and Twitter.

To help us obtain this feedback, please click on the link below and fill in this survey.

So, someone or something is watching, somewhere 🙂

How to reset a broken culture?

I’d recently read “Rework“, the book that 37signals’ founders wrote about what they learned along the way while growing their business, and why they think the mould about setting up a small business (or growing into a larger business) shouldn’t just be broken, but thrown away too.

It made me think about the things I’ve done right – being myself, being open and honest, feeling my customers’ pain, and the things I’ve done wrong – being overkeen to delegate, defer, insist, be grouchy, and allow myself be pushed into creating policy to deal with a corner case instead of dealing with it properly, falling into the various terrible management traps that lie in wait, trying to catch you out when you least expect it.

One recurring theme throughout the book, though in many different shapes and sizes, is the simple and old-fashioned adage of “treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself”, and that’s something I really identified with. It’s something we should live our life by more often.

Continue reading “How to reset a broken culture?”

Detrain or not detrain? That is the question…

Those of you who live in London and the South East likely saw the chaos that was caused by a bungled cable theft to South West Trains commuter services yesterday.

After over three hours stuck going nowhere, and with little or no information about how longer they would be involuntarily detained on the train, a number of passengers on a train within walking distance of a station decided to self evacuate, seeing as the railway appeared, at least from their point of view, to be making no attempt to help them.

Evacuating a train to track level is not a decision which is taken lightly. It’s no easy task, regardless of whether passengers are able to sit at step level and drop down, or come down an evacuation ladder. It’s still a long way down for most folk, a slow process, and once you’re on the floor, there’s lots to trip over and fall on. Oh, and in this case, add in a high voltage electric rail, just to build the excitement.

Like the initial attempted cable robbery, the response from the railway operator seemed to be bungled too. From detaining people for excessively long periods, to the local Plods threatening to arrest and prosecute those who self-evacuated for trespass, adding to their distress, the whole thing seemed to be a mess of confusion and frustration.

(SWT have since decided that although the original cause for the problem was vandalism, they do want to compensate delayed passengers.)

The basic fact is that there doesn’t seem to be a best practice for rail staff which says, “Okay, you’ve been trying for too long, you should give up trying to move this train (or trains), and now make it safe to detrain these people to track level and walk them in.”

Right now, local staff (the driver, the station staff) can’t make that decision, unless it’s more dangerous to be on the train (i.e. it’s well alight). They need the decision to come from on high.

The decision is fractured – between the train operator, Network Rail, and the BTP. In itself it’s a problem, you’ve got to stop all other trains in the area of the train you’re evacuating (though this seemed to have largely been done for them on this occasion!). It’s also a last resort. It’s admitting defeat.

People faced with a failure situation will always want to “try one last thing”, usually several times, before saying “Okay, there’s no more we can do” and stopping. It’s human nature. Who we are and what we do. The best thing to do is give these folk some guidelines, to help them make the decision to throw the towel in, and to show them that it’s not wrong when they finally do.

There needs to be some best practice for dealing with stranded passenger trains. There needs to be some timelimit recommended, which is longer than an hour, and less than three, upon which the white flag is raised and passengers are evacuated.

Then the folk in charge can actually make a decision, with the confidence they aren’t getting fired tomorrow.