Christian Austin

Said the following about Germaine Mbabi:

“Against a backdrop of large scale business change, Germaine arrived at GTR like a hurricane of positivity with plans to transform us into the team of trusted customer experience professionals that we are today.

During this transition, she was the first to arrive in the morning, and the last person to leave at night. She'd spend much of her time listening to our thoughts, idea, and opinions, and shared her vision of success with us in ways that we understood and could believe in.

Germaine can spot somebody’s hidden strength a mile off, and will always find a way for us to draw on these to make things better (or more fun) for our customers. Her passion for customer experience and teamwork is contagious, even on the most disrupted of days.

No matter how crazy things get though, she is always on hand to encourage, support, and occasionally remind us to have a life outside of work.

In February this year, with Germaine’s support, we were able to put smiles on our customer's faces by having our trains display cheeky, station and train based chat up lines on the passenger information screens (Do you travel in coach 6 of this 8 car train often?). Our On-Board Supervisors also got in the fun by sharing their own suggestions that we would add to their trains during their shift. Our twitter feed was on fire with customers sharing videos and pictures of their funny and romantic commutes. We like to think that some of our commuters found love that day, sharing a moment over some extremely poor quality puns.

Later, on International Women's Day, we added some inspiration to our customer's journeys by having our trains display quotes from some of the most inspirational women of our times, including Michelle Obama, Oprah, and Beyonce. Again, this was a big hit with our staff and customers.

Germaine has made a huge difference to our team and the experience of our customers. She is destined for great things and will almost certainly leave us one day to become a visionary director. But while we still have her, we’d be really chuffed if she could be honoured by this award.“

Tim McCarthy

Said the following about Germaine Mbabi:

“Germaine is a creative and inspirational member of the Network Operations Communications and Customer Experience Team. She has outstanding interpersonal and relationship building skills and is confident in advising and influencing senior colleagues. She makes time for everyone and is always approachable and greets everyone with a smile. She is thoughtful, considerate, highly professional and articulate & is always positive about Control. She has the ability to communicate with clarity and enthusiasm and someone I would describe as savvy as she has a clear understanding of risks and opportunities. We are very lucky to have such a positive and influential person working with us in Control.

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