Trip Advisor, Customer Service and the future of our railways

Yes indeed. On the one hand, Maxwell House. On the other, Monsooned Malabar supplied by a small local importer. You can guess which of the two places at the opposite end of the spectrum referred to earlier sold which.

 

I don’t need the Monsoon Malabar, just something that suggests the venue recognises that standards have risen somewhat.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I think coffee at the moment is very much the drink of choice for a large part of the population the days of a teaspoon of instant in a polystyrene cup are long gone. At the moment people are much more concerned about what they eat and drink and its Provence than in the past.

In my previous job I had a customer ask what artificial colours and flavours were in the cask beers we had on... I then had to explain for the next 10 minutes the difference between mainstream keg and Cask, when I told her that they're so many brewery's and micro brewery's in the UK and how it would be impossible to know every single ingredient in every single beer she was very understanding. I didn't try to blind her with BS or talk down to her.

I think that with customer service (as someone who has to deal with the public when they've enjoyed themselves a little too much) it's very simple just treat people how you'd like to be treated yourself, It's not difficult is it?

 

Some years ago, I was asked to spend a night in a local hotel, for free, in exchange for carrying out a "mystery shopper" type review. The review consisted of a pro-forma of dozens of questions to offer scores against; the collated scores were fed back to the hotels and attractions in the scheme via the Local Tourism Partnership.

The problem being - none of the things I was asked to rank were of much interest to me as a visitor, but many of the things I was interested in weren't asked! "Were the towels folded over attractively?" Well, yes, so five out of five, but frankly I couldn't give a stuff about that. "How easy was it to find the parking?" Bl**dy impossible, but that wasn't a question that was asked...

The point being, schemes based on mystery shopping or similar have their issues, because typically they rate what a committee of people in the industry think is worth rating, and don't ask actual visitors what they think. I'd rather take my chances with Trip Advisor, with a degree of scepticism about ratings that seem extreme either way, since those commenting are likely to be commenting on the issues that actually matter to them, rather than what some committee of the great and the good thinks should matter to them.

Tom

 

I was given 'Beyond Command & Control' by John Seddon & others for Christmas, fascinating reading which completely agrees with your point

 

Scale that up, and you have the nonsense of hotel star ratings, based on the facilities offered by a hotel and not the actual quality of the hotel.

These are decisions taken by the sort of people for whom it is essential that clothes hangers must be the sort that don’t hook onto the rail, but into something permanently attached to the rail. Never mind those of us who use the darn things and find “proper” hangers much easier.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

I would agree wholeheartedly however in our world where information & disinformation overloads us, would we prefer to have neither and find out for ourselves? Imagine TripAdvisor with Basil Fawlty - now there's an idea for a new series I'm sure!
I would say that most of us are able to question information and where necessary, fact-check to some degree although looking on social media sometimes proves me wrong on this.

Also imagine the 1950s. Steam in abundance, no knowledge of climate change and only newspapers to control our minds - bliss I hear echoing

 

I detest Trip Advisor, Google reviews etc. but have to accept them as a fact of life. On two occasions I've received irate phone complaints but once the person on the other end calmed down, it was established that they'd Googled the wrong phone number and were complaining to the wrong business. Now had they taken to social media to vent their spleen, my shop could have received two very scathing reviews when in fact I was innocent of all charges. I'm sure that happens and other bad reviews are posted out of sheer spite but those reading them won't know that of course.

 

I think you have to be careful in extrapolating that principle i.e. that if you have put a notice on the website, that anyone who fails to read it can't complain / is an idiot. (Perhaps the NHS should try that!) One could turn it round and put yourself in the shoes of the potential customer. I have certainly been to railways expecting them to be open and being disappointed if they are not, as I guess I go to a railway, or the supermarket or the cinema etc, at a time to suit me. It strikes me that finding you are not open (and the same applies if the last train to make a round trip has gone, which can be fairly early e.g. before 14.00) is worthy of a comment (although I agree that it is better to put it constructively than having a rant) but one can hardly reward the attraction for being closed. I am sure there are all sorts of valid reasons why the railway chooses not to provide a service that day, and they have taken the loss of potential revenue into account, but it seems to me to be a legitimate comment.

 

But would you go to the cinema before checking what was showing and when?

 

But its not as easy to find out what is running and when.
Over the past few years Rosters seem to have disappeared and when you call the railway to check you get one of either they don't know what it is except its a loco using steam or diesel.

Or you realise its a diesel don't you.

That really rubs me up the wrong way.
That you don't realise thats why we are there.

Had that on one railway traveled half the country to get there.

First you get is you realise the next train is diesel hauled don't you.

 

No - but when I go to the cinema, I go for a particular showing. When I go to a visitor attraction for a day out, I tend to expect that it will be open during a core period of 10-11 am to 4-5 pm. It's unreasonable for us, as knowledgeable enthusiasts, to expect that Joe Public will be aware enough of how a railway operates to automatically think about looking up the timetable to plan the day in detail.

And, on that point, the ever increasing proliferation of different timetables for different days, tailored specifically to meet estimated traffic levels, will make this problem worse as certain days of the week get much less of a service than others.

With respect, that issue is of much more interest to those on here than most of the public. I find it incredibly frustrating that many railways don't publish their rosters, or maintain them when they change, but I recognise that on a shoestring operation, this is not a core activity. And this isn't about steam v diesel (which is usually properly shown on the timetable), but individual locos - indeed, the disdain for diesel by some volunteers when a trip has been made for the purposes of riding behind a particular diesel can be especially frustrating.

 

Possibly, if I find myself at a loose end while out and about.

 

But the diesel enthusiast is in the minority. To the average MOP, they are coming for a ride on a steam railway.

 

Virtually every customer has a different reason or expectation. You can please some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time.

 

A minority of people you can never please. I suspect a few on Nat Pres fall into that category, judging by their posts.

 

Bit of both. The cinema is actually an interesting case study in a business that arguably should not really exist, with the proliferation of options for watching films at home or on personal devices, yet they have managed to take an outdated product and provide an experience that people are prepared to pay for. Possibly some lessons for the preserved railway industry.

 

They may be. But that doesn’t mean it’s right to assume that all visitors are in that category. First, because some aren’t and will be offended by the assumption. Second, going apologetic about a diesel being in use reinforces the idea of “diesel = bad”. Better by far to have a script that tells said visitor that it’s a diesel (especially if a late substitution), but presents it neutrally.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

I am afraid you are making excuses for someone being a bit of a prune. I once misread the weekly closing day for an eatery and arrived to find it duly closed. My fault and my fault only. Had I then compounded my mistake by writing a bad review on somewhere I hadn't experienced then it would have been absurd and unfair.

 

It sounds from this like more heritage railway senior management should take their wives/children/other non-enthusiast relations/friends along to their railway, and ask for honest feedback afterwards (plus of course act on that feedback...)