Carol King

Said the following about Khusrav Waghchhipawalla:

“National Rail Enquiries (NRE) would like to nominate Khushrav Waghchhipawalla for the Samaritans Lifesaver Award category for his calm, professional, quick thinking and collaborative work that culminated in preventing a railway fatality.

The NRE Customer Service Centre are based in Mumbai, India. They are an outsource provider for NRE. The team are responsible for answering general telephone enquiries (circa three million calls a year) from customer along with responding to calls received from thirteen different train companies Help Points.

Due to the misuse and user error of Help Point monitors, the machines are designed to automatically disconnect after a period of four minutes. This is not an issue for the majority of enquiry calls handled as they are usually wrapped up within one to two minutes.

The above being said our advisors’ can be challenged in emergency or unusual situations due to:

• The potential length of a conversation, being mindful that the call disconnects after four minutes

• They do not benefit from CCTV or video recording to assess a customers body language

• There is no warning that a telephone is about to be received from a customer struggling to cope

• The expectation to switch from their normal role into the role of a ‘Samaritan’ with no notice

On Saturday, 23 July our team faced traumatic scenario.

A call was received from a Help Point from a customer who informed the advisor that he wanted to kill himself and to inform that we could find his body on the rail track at the station.

Despite being presented with the challenges listed above and being over 4,500 miles away Khushrav Waghchhipawalla spoke with the customer as though he was his close friend. He carefully listened to the customer and shared his concern, understanding and sensitivity.

Despite the fact Help Point continued to disconnect Khushrav kept calm. Every time the customer called again Khushrav ensured he was there to take over the call. Khushrav was able to assure the customer he was speaking to the same person by relaying to the customer everything that had been talked about previously.

In between the calls being disconnected Khushrav collaboratively worked with his team by passing details of the call and the whereabouts of the customer to his colleagues to ensure that the British Transport Police were contacted.

The customer very slowly became less agitated, but, Khushrav continued to talk with the customer until the Police arrived.

The Police have confirmed that the customer was taken into custody for his safe keeping as an adult under risk, until he was sectioned under the 136 Mental Health Act. The customer has now been added to the Force Suicide prevention team database as “AT RISK” and will be disseminated to all Police Officers, for information, just in case he comes to light again.

A testimony from a Police Officer praising Khusrav’s actions is shown below.

‘Praise indeed should go to the operator who took the call and whose actions probably prevented the situation from deteriorating into a more serious incident.’

Kindest regards

Graham

Graham A.C. Cottington 4256

Intelligence Officer“