E-mailed complaints to TOCs - has anyone ever received a response from a TOC that actually goes anywhere near to addressing the complaint being made, at the first attempt?
I ask because I have not - every one of the many e-mailed complaints I have made over the years has been met initially with a generic stock response with little or no reference to the actual complaint.
I think it is a disgrace, and simply a waste of the TOCs' money to provide these pointless initial responses (which amount to little more than the initial automatically-generated acknowledgement of receipt) and which must surely be accepted by very few people, merely leading to further anger and repeated attempts to have the original issue addressed.
As someone who used to work in a TOC complaints team, let me shed some light on TOC complaint responses and why they can be so poor (gen correct as of 2 years ago!).
There are three main problems and some lower-level issues which, IMO, cause this. The main ones are intertwined:
1)
Volume of complaints - enormous. As passenger fares have risen, so too have the expectations of the customers who pay them. This is particularly acute at Intercity TOCs where there are naturally more things to break and go wrong (VTWC intercity vs LM commuter/regional, issues affecting VTWC only: Poor WiFI, Shop not open, 1st class food not served/inadequate/poor, window blind broken, 1st class lounge poor/closed, rewards programme problems, need I go on?). Added to this is the sense of empowerment the customer now feels; the average customer is a little more well-informed than they were 20 years ago. The customer now feels empowered to report bad service to the correct regulator or ombudsman, or publish it on social media. Thus, we have customers who are at once empowered, paying more, with higher expectations and the railway now includes more services which can all potentially fail.
2)
Target setting - TOC complaints teams are routinely set targets for work output. This has two outcomes, in my view. The first is that it encourages agents to see each complaint as a piece of work which needs to disappear as soon as possible. The second is that, owing to the (often) repetitive and voluminous nature of complaints, TOCs now use systems which select stock paragraphs with signed-off messages to construct responses. So, you have a perfect storm of the agent wanting the piece of work to go away coupled with a system which actively enables them to do just that.
3)
Management - sometimes poor, sometimes just overworked. Management will usually quality-check a proportion of agents' work, but it is just that - a proportion. Immediate management do not always "emotionally own" complaints, and have no face-to-face contact with customers.
Other issues are:
Disinterested staff - replying to complaints doesn't appeal to most people and many agents see it as "just a job" with no emotional ownership or overarching interest in the railway. I worked with someone who, before joining the company in her late twenties,
had only been on a train once before in her life. Can you even comprehend that?
Confusopoly - the railway is very complicated and its complexity takes many people by surprise when they first join. You really do need to be quite self-motivated to unpick all the strands. Some complaints require pseudo-detective work to answer properly and appropriately.
Entry-level position - Answering complaints does not generate money (wait, I'll come onto that next!). Thus, the role of the complaints handler is an entry-level one. It is generally paid okay, but it tends to attract a lot people from outside the industry - see above for why that can be an issue - with only limited internal applicants. Sometimes, the level of English grammar and syntax is lacking in often young employees.
Short-sighted senior leadership - often fail to see that it is easier to protect existing custom than generate new custom, which ties in with the above.
All the above is my own opinion, not necessarily fact. But I hope it sheds a little light on what happens when you press "SEND" and wait a couple of weeks...
FWIW, I really enjoyed handling complaints, but I was usually allocated non-standard (interesting!!) ones which required a great deal more time to resolve, and therefore I was much less subject to issue (2) above.
EDIT: Interesting tidbit - before any compensation issued is taken into account, a complaint costs the company on average between £12-20 to respond, depending on the complaint medium, even if they are just telling you to go swivel.
