The RailStaff Awards 2024

Dave Whittall

Said the following about Avanti Compliance & Group Travel Team:

“When the pandemic and subsequent lockdown struck a huge number of Avanti season ticket holders no longer needed their season tickets but were unable to return to the point of purchase to obtain their refunds.

National rail conditions of travel stipulate that tickets must be returned to the original point of purchase to obtain refunds so unlike online purchases this left customers who had purchased in person at a ticket office with a problem. Unable to leave their homes and the stress of the pandemic and lockdown, not being able to obtain their refunds must have added to customer’s anxiety particularly as being a long distance operator some of our season tickets are 10's of thousands of pounds.

The challenge we at Avanti faced was recognised pretty quickly and thanks to the Compliance Team, within days discussions were underway with payment gateway suppliers and our web team to enable us to set up an online portal especially for our customers who had purchased their season tickets at ticket offices.

Another few days and the portal had been set up and ready to receive online applications

Refunding station purchased tickets in this way is not a straightforward process, these tickets are the traditional paper tickets so images are required, due diligence needs to be completed to mitigate any unnecessary loss to the industry and an approval process needs to be in place for high value refunds. All this is usually done as part of a face to face interaction at ticket offices but with offices closed and everyone at home this was new ground.

The Avanti Compliance Team partnered with our Group Travel team and whilst working from home we communicated via Teams (a new concept at the time) to organise ourselves to deliver a quick and efficient response to our customers.

Whilst many industries got very bad press for the way they dealt with customer refunds Avanti's swiftly developed approach to such an unusual predicament meant that all refund claimants received their money back within 2 weeks which was way beyond the customer promise and industry expectations especially given the scale of the claims.

Almost 2000 customers were reimbursed and this involved over £2 million pounds. It involved hours and hours of interaction between the Compliance and Group Travel Teams and much customer interaction to ensure customers were happy. This often involved out of hours activity and was outside the usual remit of these teams.

Customer feedback was excellent and the teams were just happy to be able to take some of the stress away from customers at this particular unprecedented time.“