Customer
We aim to deliver excellent service to our customers. To do this we must understand and respond to our customer needs by engaging with them considerately and continually.
We do this in a number of ways, including customer surveys, focus groups, customer panels and face-to-face meetings such as Meet the Manager sessions. We also conduct occasional in-depth research into customer perceptions and monitor satisfaction and complaints statistics. Our data shows that the three issues of greatest importance to our passengers remain safety, performance of trains and our ability to deal with service delays and disruption.
Customer Satisfaction
Passenger satisfaction within the franchised rail sector is constantly monitored by Passenger Focus, the independent national watchdog for rail consumers. The autumn 2006 survey demonstrated the positive progress made by First ScotRail and First TransPennine Express.
First ScotRail was recognised as one of the best performing regional train operators in the country with an 'overall opinion of journey' score of 88%. The company also significantly increased the scores for punctuality, reliability and dealing with delays. In both these areas the overall score increased by 11% on the previous year.
First TransPennine Express showed significant improvements in customer satisfaction with an increase in the 'overall opinion of journey' score of 7%. This places them second highest in the long-distance sector. The score for provision of information increased by 16% and the improvements to facilities at stations rating increased by 20%.
This year has been particularly challenging for First Great Western. We have amalgamated three businesses with consequent changes to the management structure, and have introduced major timetable changes and train fleet refurbishment programmes. Although we have tried to manage these processes seamlessly with minimal impact to our customers, we have not always been successful. We are working hard to introduce more robust systems to minimisefuture disruption and will build on the lessons learnt when applying future timetable changes. Throughout this period we communicated proactively with our stakeholders. We continue to consult on timetable changes and have made over 200 changes in response to ongoing customer feedback. Preparations are already underway to deliver three million additional seats in and out of London Paddington next year.
As a non-franchised business, Hull Trains does not take part in the National Passenger Survey but conducts its own customer opinion survey on an annual basis. In the November 2006 survey the 'overall opinion of journey' score was 86.7%.
