Chris Paddon

Said the following about TRU Customer Experience Team:

“The TRU customer experience team is relatively new, only coming together a little over 12 months ago, with the mission to listen to our customers and act on the insight to drive improvement

Since forming the team have developed and delivered a detailed insight programme that listens to customer feedback through post travel surveys, real time feedback, complaints, customer forums and a panel of 9000 customers.

They have established a series of customer KPI’s with owners across the main organisations involved in TRU, including Network Rail, Northern Trains and TPE to drive visibility and improvement in the experience we all deliver during planned disruption.

They have been able to interpret the customer insight to really understand what we are doing well and importantly where we need to improve, communicating effectively, with empathy and passion through the voice of the customer to drive multiple improvements in a collaborative way, encouraging colleagues across all 3 organisations to help customers go do their thing, including

Adding information onto ticket machines, so customers know when they purchase a ticket that there will be disruption, managing their expectations

Improving wayfinding, so customers can find their way to and from rail replacement busses

Piloting ideas, such as the use of paddle boards for colleagues to help direct customers to where they need to go

Enabling customer service training for existing colleagues and supporting inductions for new colleagues

Working with our commercial teams to review the way we look at ticketing, reducing crowding on routes impacted by planned disruption

Developing colleague information packs to support them in helping customers during disruption

Guiding reviews of conductor announcements to further support customers as they approach disruption.

All this has been done with the customer at the heart, using our customer insight to highlight, guide and measure key improvements in the way we support customers

The learning from the TRU work is now informing how we plan and deliver all of our planned disruption to support us outside of the TRU project“