Don’t tell customers to go away
A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post on the Hitachi crisis in which I bemoaned the fact that the railway found it necessary to ask customers not to travel for nine whole days.
The post was interpreted by some of my readers as a criticism of the service offer put in place by GWR during the crisis.
This had not been my intention. Instead, I was trying to highlight that the railway’s systems, processes and culture can sometimes result in a need to pull down the shutters when other businesses might be able to stay open for business.
But I do worry that the lack of revenue incentives in the new National Rail Contracts will make this situation worse.
Disruption is always difficult and exhausting to manage, and it is easier if there are fewer customers around. Without the pressure of revenue, it will become tempting for managing directors to display the “do not travel” message more and more frequently.
When I worked at Chiltern Railways, we just didn’t have the luxury. Indeed, our approach was the opposite; to seek to retain as many customers as possible, including during disruption.
Now, before I tempt the same criticisms as my Hitachi article, let be clear that I’m fully aware that as a smaller franchise, it was easier for us. I’m not saying that GWR could have done what we did during the Hitachi crisis.
But just because something is possible, it doesn’t mean it will always happen. And it was the pressure of revenue in an environment of competition, no subsidy and no cap or collar that gave us the need to chase down every customer.
The Harbury landslip
Chiltern Railways seems to have a thing about tunnel collapses. The Gerrards Cross tunnel collapse in 2005 has become famous. The landslide at Harbury Tunnel exactly 10 years later in 2015 is less well known, but I remember it well because I was Commercial Director at the time and responsible for ensuring that we - somehow - didn’t lose too many of our valued customers.
Some of that was just making it clear that we were open, such as on the website:
And in emails to customers:
As you can see from the email above, we cut fares for the affected area and offered extra discounted Advance fares.
While we weren’t able to run a train service between Banbury and Leamington Spa, we did everything possible to ensure that our rail replacement bus service was outstanding. We had staff at stations checking the quality of coaches. So often, a rail replacement coach sent by a coach company is below standard. Any coach that turned up that wasn’t up to the standards we held for our customers was sent away:
We made sure we always had so many coaches that there was always one boarding whenever passengers may turn up:
And we branded this as our ‘step straight on’ bus service, which we communicated through all channels:
As you can see from the screen above, we never misled our customers. We were explicit that the journey time would be 45 minutes longer, but we made the most of what we had. In this case, it was the ability to ensure that customers would never need to wait for the bus.
And then to really ensure we retained goodwill, we provided an ‘atom of delight’ at Banbury: a gift bag for each customer containing an explanation leaflet and a chocolate brownie. And we put particular effort into ensuring that the chocolate brownies were actually tasty: made by a proper bakery not a bland institutional caterer (sorry, not a great photo!):
Obviously, not everything we did was perfect. But it had the desired effect: we maintained customer goodwill and minimised the revenue impact:
Now, to reiterate again, I’m not saying that GWR could have done all this during the Hitachi crisis.
But I am saying that the contractual incentives in place on the rail network (as far as the Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail suggests) don’t really encourage this kind of obsessive determination to encourage customers to keep travelling.
If the Chiltern line makes it a hat-trick in 2025 with another tunnel collapse, I will be watching out to see whether the customer message is “we’re open for business” or "please don’t travel”.
