South West Trains has embarked on a smart technology revolution that will see over 2,300 iPhones rolled out to front-line customer service employees to provide faster, more detailed information to customers.
Adam Piddington, Deputy Customer Service Director, South West Trains, said: “With over 230 million passenger journeys made across our network every year, it’s vital that we provide fast, accurate information to our customers.
“We’ve made some significant improvements to customer information over recent years and we now have one of the most used of any rail twitter feeds in UK with over 250,000 followers who can quickly and easily access real-time information on our services. However, we wanted to make sure that our front-line staff had that same level of information to pass on to our customers on our trains and at stations.
“More than half of our train services now offer free WiFi and there are plans to extend this even further this year, so our staff and customers will be able to easily use their smart phones to keep up to date on the move.
“This investment is part of a £50million package of improvements to enhance the service we deliver to our customers and make it easier for people to travel with us. We are in the process of recruiting 100 new customer ambassadors to provide a more personalised service at our stations, and will also be investing in better technology with a new website, mobile app and extra ticket machines across our network that have a 24/7 video link to a new dedicated customer contact centre. We’re confident these changes will deliver a greatly improved service to our customers.”
Greig Chandler, who is a Guards Coach for South West Trains at Staines, said: “This is great news for front-line staff and means we will be able to provide much faster information to our customers. It will make finding out information so much easier and the selection of apps we can use will help us to provide better and more accurate information to customers.”
As well as the investment in customer information technology, an innovative customer service training programme called ‘I make the difference’ has also been provided to all front-line staff.
The iPhones will replace the Blackberrys previously used by South West Trains employees. The roll-out of more than 2,300 iPhones started during February and will be complete by the end of March. South West Trains has also introduced a number of internal ‘i-Champions’ to provide help and advice to staff around the network with using their new iPhone.