Great Western Coffee Shop

An email to the Cross Country Customer Service Director (jhiggins@crosscountrytrains.co.uk) after not having had a reply for 2 months after being promised a full reply within 10 days. I guessed the email address, and had this response within 24 hours!

I hope someone else finds this information useful.



Jeremy Higgins thanks you for your email and he has asked me to investigate and respond on his behalf.
 
Please accept my sincere apologies for the delay in responding to you.  It is true to say that due to the severe weather conditions our postbag has been unusually high and our response times have fallen behind what we normally achieve. 
 
I can confirm that a letter with your travel vouchers will be sent from our department today.
 
Once again I am sorry for the delay in responding.
 
Kind regards
 
Pamela Johnson
Customer Relations Duty Manager
CrossCountry

A couple of years ago I was on a Voyager which, in true CrossCountry fashion, was (a) rammed (b) late (c) devoid of any visible staff.

The seat next to me was occupied by a voluble Irishman, who proclaimed to half the carriage that the French and the Germans wouldn't stand for this s--t, and that our railways were the worst in Europe.

I gently pointed out to him who owned CrossCountry. He immediately avowed that he was going to write to Angela Merkel and tell her about the shocking state of her trains. He was sure she'd be horrified if she heard.

I don't know if he ever carried out the threat, but if so, I think that really does count as "taking it to the top".

The bad weather hasn't lasted for 2 months though.

Wrong kind of drizzle?

Except that isn't the style of email address CrossCountry use and it's lucky the email wasn't just bounced back. Whilst 'going to the top' may seem appropriate in some circumstances, I wonder how much effort was used finding this email, forwarding it to the customer relations department and them forming an individual reply - which could have been used to respond to someone who had followed the 'official' procedure.
Nobody likes an automated or cut and paste response but it is unfortunately the reality.

I had already had a reply with a XC reference and a promise of a full reply within 10 days ...that was 2 months ago. I had followed this up with weekly reminder emails, to which I had the standard automated response. XC had every opportunity to respond to these, and didn't.  I found the name  of the customer service manager very easily, together  with a  redacted email address, which I guessed by counting the asterisks.
As it happened I had a letter and a rail travel voucher for the amount I was claiming, today.
If I hadn't chased them up, I could have been waiting until next January 26th.
By going 'top down' instead of 'bottom up' (reversing the normal customer service procedure)  it at least highlighted to senior management that all is not well at the customer  service end of their operation..

Ok that is a little crappy.

Having similar response problems with my new car, leasing company gave me a delivery date of 7th January (ordered 31 October), which has come and gone, I keep chasing the leasing company, the car manufacturer is chasing me (I mentioned my woes on Twitter), the one cog that doesn't seem to be working is the dealer, who still hasn't provided the leasing company with an SLI number - the number allocated to a car before it even has a chassis number. So I have no idea when to expect my car or if it's even been built yet. I could, in theory, take my business elsewhere but I'd still probably be looking at in excess of a ten week lead time. Outcome is that RTS now has to walk to work for anything before a half four start. :o/

Indeed, it isn't! The majority of operators use First.Last

In circumstances it certainly does work and is appropriate. When FGW failed several times to sell me a ticket to Calais (H426) becuase "it doesn't exist, it's a Eurostar ticket, (eventually after accepting it's existence) it's a Southeastern discount ticket and I'm not allowed to sell it". I dropped an email to the Fares Strategy Manager (nice guy) - a staff brief was sent out to all 'retail colleagues' (sorry about that folks, that was me) next day and I got my ticket. I then followed up with customer relations

So there are times it works, also, if I have issues with penalty fares, prosecutions or anything more complex than a complaint, I'll skip Customer Relations and send it directly to the Prosecutions Manager (as that's where customer relations would send it anyway). He seems to like me and I get a good response pretty rapidly.

I agree, I've found Southeastern to be the worst for this. I can physically predict their response to anything you throw at them but I've been impressed with First recently, I appear to have my own complaints manager (that could be why) and he does a good job looking after me.

I have to agree in principle with your point, I don't like people who pointlessly jump the gun. Although sometimes the results of these things are good! This was sent to our very own Ollie after someone who shall remain unnamed emailed Mark Hopwood.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BBPcoARCUAIDNYl.jpg)