The RailStaff Awards 2024

Nominations for Rail Team of the Year

Anne Gray

Said the following about ScotRail Customer Information Team:

“At ScotRail we are using our CCTV to assist with maximising operating efficiency, managing customer flows at stations and working with police to reduce criminal activity at stations. The Customer Service Centre (CSC) plays an integral role in managing service disruption through keeping our customers informed and updated via station announcements and help points. However, our structure was no longer fit for purpose. We only had 1 member of staff in Control updating Tyrell and implementing contingency arrangements for the whole network and the existing technology meant that the Customer Service Centre was working independently. This has led to an unequal distribution of work across the 3 locations and technology did not allow us to support each other.

The decision was made to transfer CIS responsibility to the West of Scotland Signaling Centre (WSSC) and provide additional resource within that team. Posts were closed within the CSCs and new posts opened within Customer Information at the WSSC. We have now 3 staff on shift Monday to Friday and 2 at the weekend. This has helped us to improve real time updates from Control. As an industry we are measured on our PIDD targets of cancellations reported via Tyrell and CSL2 updates. We are consistently the top performing Abellio TOC and within the top 5 across all TOCs.

We completed a refurbishment of the existing Paisley CSC Operational Control Room to achieve a working environment for our staff to be proud off. It provides the latest technology to enable staff to provide an improved service to our customers and further capability for continuous improvement in our goal to achieve excellence in customer service. The previous technology limited our ability to respond to customer needs. Help points were not transferrable and therefore if we lost power at one centre there was no capability to deal with customer enquiries. We couldn’t use all of our resource across both Centres during busy time. The upgrade in technology has enabled us to transfer help point calls between both Centres to enhance our overall resilience. The old technology in place within the CSC saw over 5,000 cameras continually sequencing on the video walls whether there was 1 or 200 customers at the stations. Dunfermline monitored stations in the east and Paisley monitored the west. The new interactive video wall provides the capability to view any of the networked CCTV cameras at Paisley CSC. The video wall can be programmed to view key routes or stations at specified times. The staff have introduced a morning and evening peak view where busy stations are monitored closely. It can also be used to monitor stations where there have been reports of youths in station areas or high vandalism or there are special events resulting in higher footfall. There is increased functionality associated with the new technology such as enhanced images from the cameras, a zoom in for fixed cameras, motion detection field which is invaluable when searching for CCTV evidence as this will save time and help us to react to requests for footage much quicker.

The next phase of the project will be to introduce analytics at 59 stations where there have been 4 or more trespass incidents within the past 12 months. We have a program of work ongoing with Property Services and IT to upgrade network connectivity at 100 stations and introduce further enhancements to the CCTV and Help point systems.

Since the start of this franchise 79 additional stations are now fitted with CCTV with a further 201 Cameras added to the network to increase customer and staff safety and security across our network.

This ongoing delivery of enhancements meant that staff had to relocate out of the centre and into the temporary accommodations at Paisley. 7 staff moved into a portable cabin located in the car park at Paisley in February this year with 2 members of staff in an overspill office. Due to the limited space the announcer was working between 2 work stations and the staff in the overspill office dealt with the visitors who came to the centre to uplift CCTV media and also sit with the TS auditors who came to the centre audit the cameras.

We have seen the delivery of Customer Information at an additional 90 Stations since the start of the franchise with a further 30 programed between now and March 2019 delivering real time Customer Information to all stations in Scotland. Digital Customer Information Screens integrated within our existing Customer Information Systems provides enhanced train, special notices and marketing information to our passengers. This strengthened the case for additional resource in WSSC.

We have worked with our staff and the local reps to agree changes to our work flow which means that staff at Paisley concentrate on the stations in the Central belt where there is a higher proportion of staff in the CSC. The staff in Dunfermline are focusing on our rural route and the east of the country.

The recently completed Customer Service Centre at Paisley with the continued support from our co-operating centre located in Dunfermline and the team in WSSC are now aligned to enable us to deliver our promise in achieving world class customer service through delivering a true integrated customer support service.

This has been an extremely challenging year for the whole team. The project to refurbish the centre was a huge project in itself but the restructure of the team resulted in a number of additional pressures. Staff morale did take a dip due to uncertainty over jobs and reductions in staff numbers. Staff at Paisley were not keen on working in a portable cabin, the staff who moved from Paisley to WSSC were nervous about having to move and taking on a new location and the staff at Dunfermline continued to deal with high levels of help point calls and CCTV image requests with the reduced numbers. Nevertheless, even during this period the staff within the team delivered high levels of customer service which can be seen in our NRPS and mystery shop scores.

I am extremely proud of the commitment shown from everyone across this team and would like to nominate them for Team of the Year.“