Tag Archives: Travelcard

Should we put up with poor service?

No!  It’s that simple.  There’s too much of it about and it’s got to stop.  Whether I pay for the service directly or through some strange indirect route, it shouldn’t be rubbish.

As consumers – where there’s no contract or service agreement in place – we often think we have to put up with poor service, because it doesn’t appear there is any other option.  Add outsourcing to this where suddenly the English (in my case) the other person is using can be a challenge, and this can get even worse.

There are many reasons why the service might be poor – even though for me (a true believer in nothing but great service – at home and at work) it goes against everything I’m about – and they include:

  1. Misunderstanding – for either or both parties
  2. Communication problems – related to above
  3. Someone’s had a bad day – it happens to us all but it has wide impacts
  4. Lack of accountability and responsibility – just reading from scripts
  5. Unable to think for themselves – those providing the service (unable = not allowed)

These all happen and we can understand how they can impact service.  And they can be changed and services improved.  But when there’s lack of thinking or planning into how the service will work, or even what service is all about and not having the people with the right attitude in place that’s not right.

Some examples this week of poor service – both from the same company but different people at different times – that I’ve experienced in preparation for starting a new working life up in London and on the lovely London commute are below…

South West Trains – who provide the train services for my commute into London – scored badly twice this week.  And it’s not just me who’s had bad service from them recently.

Having spotted a Twitter handle for South West Trains recently and seen them use it very well, I was impressed and their service looked to be headed in the right direction but no!

On Monday I needed to get a monthly ticket for my journey.  Easy or so I thought.  I headed to the local station at about 11:20am but hit my first hurdle there and was told you can’t put it on your Oyster pass there because they’re not Transport For London (TFL) – who run the London Underground.  Now for non-Londoners this gets complicated now.  Oyster cards are PAYG or stored value tickets for the tube within London but also London travel zones 1-6, which can include trains, if that train company takes part.  Oh the joys of privatisation of the national railways!

But you can use the Oyster card at the local station.  Ok so someone’s not really thought this through.  TFL tickets and South West Train tickets can be used there and provide the same service.  I’m just a customer and just want to travel into London.  I don’t care who owns the route.  That should be transparent to me when it comes to simply buying tickets.  Maybe it’s down to system integration at the back-end.  Poor service example number 1.

Ok – so we now need to go to a local TFL (tube) station.  The image below shows the complexity of London train and tube travel if you didn’t know already…

It’s a big map, there’s lots of stations and some of it is over 100 years old!  But the ticketing should work – the trains do, on the whole.

We now get to the tube station and Mrs. Noble pulls up in the car outside.  In I go now confident that this will work.  Monthly ticket please on my Oyster – “No you can’t get a new one until after 12pm” – Say what?  Why not? – “ATOC rules!” – Huh?  A tweet to South West Trains to see if they can help but no it’s the rules, that’s it.  No reason why.  No understanding, point blank no and no other help.  Example number 2.

Both examples of 4, 5 and 6 in my points above.  They could have dealt with either request very differently and provided the same end result but the customer happier.

  • Example 1 – sorry sir, we’re not able to sell that here and I’m afraid you can’t buy a new one of ours until after 12pm, as it’s new.
  • Example 2 – sorry sir, for new ones you need to wait until after 12pm.  Oh I see it’s nearly 12pm now, let me check and we’ll sort that out for you.

Now I’ve got started I’ve got more examples of bad service to come.  Do take a look at the @My6Percent site – it’s a bit harsh but fair and you can see how bad the service can be!  As a London commuter, I just accept most of it but then that goes back to my first point – I shouldn’t.

Do you put up with bad service?

Royal Mail show us how it should be done – London Olympic tickets

Despite the fiasco about booking tickets for the London 2012 Olympics and the lack of thought that seems to have gone into the whole way the tickets are sold to UK residents (and how user friendly the systems aren’t and how the system couldn’t handle the demand for tickets, I could go on but that’s not what this blog post is about), the tickets we did get have arrived.

A very nice package, with tickets and a bit of information about the event.  It’s for rowing, which is over in Windsor, so not London, but they’ve very kindly included 4 travelcards for us to use on the day to get to the event in London.  Hmmmmm.

And they’re standing area only but the cheapest “seats” or tickets so not too unexpected.

Don’t get me wrong, I may sound not too positive about all this but I am.  It’s going to be an awesome summer in London and as I’ve said in previous posts, this is London’s year.  Plus with the Jubilee celebrations this weekend, it really doesn’t get much better.

I was at a conference in London this week about the online Olympics and the technology behind the scenes is incredible.  Never have there been games before where the demand for online media has been so great.  Back in 2008 for the Beijing Olympics, social media services like YouTube, Twitter and even Facebook were still growing up.  In 2012 it’s a completely different story, social media is pretty much everywhere and being used in all sorts of different ways, by consumers (of all ages), brands and everyone else.  The demand on the back-end infrastructure for storage, distribution and more is going to be unprecedented.  The task of forecasting what to expect will have been no small feat, and no doubt is still changing and being fine tuned.  The plans around redundancy and how to fix problems – with the technology – will be something else.  What the BBC have planned is fantastic – their Sports page on their web-site is the centre piece and the experience you’ll get on all devices – personal computers, tablets, mobiles, smart TVs and anything else, is going to be so good that it will almost (maybe not quite) be a better more immersive experience than actually being there!  That annual license fee we pay in the UK for the BBC doesn’t look too bad.  The planned 24 live better than HD (as we know it) simultaneous video streams is impressive to say the least.  This really is the first global online digital Olympics.  Right up my street – in both ways!

The BBC have got it right, lots they’ve learnt from that amazing service that is the BBC iPlayer and other global British broadcasts they’ve done – the Royal Wedding last year for example.

But the ticket system and booking events, we’ve not got it quite right.  One shining light here though – and the subject of this post – is Royal Mail.  That amazing British institution that just works so well.  Where else in the world can you post a letter or anything for that matter and know it will arrive anywhere else in the country pretty much the next day.  Yes the prices have just gone up, but it’s still worth it.  Interestingly as well, a postman I was speaking to only this week, said it’s one of the few services you still pay for before they deliver and actual give you the service.

Having had a few e-mails from the Olympic organisers about when roughly to expect the tickets to arrive, you kind of sit back just waiting and hoping.  This morning, I got an SMS message and e-mail from Royal Mail telling me the tickets would arrive today.  They then arrived care of our very friendly local postman Mick, with a big smile on his face.  Signed for with the mobile pad he had and then literally less than one minute later another SMS message and e-mail confirming they’d been received.  Now that’s proper service and a very very good use of the latest technology.  Keep it up Royal Mail, another reason Britain is brilliant.