Communication is the key to excellence in customer service

Anyone who has traveled on Eurostar will probably have had a good experience.  There really is nothing like it for convenience and ease of travel, it is so much more pleasant than the plane in every way.  Overall Eurostar does well with its customer service or at least it does well when things are going well but what happens when things go wrong like they did just before Christmas?

In case anyone is not familiar with this story allow me to fill in the gaps.  Due to heavy snow the Eurostar network ground to a halt just before Christmas.  Trains were stuck in tunnels, people were stuck on platforms and overall it was a great big mess.

This morning sees the publishing of a report into the matter which as well as being critical of the technology that failed due to the snow the report is expected to be damning about Eurostar’s customer service.

The report is likely to highlight first of all that the basic equipment in place to communicate during this crisis was sub standard and not fit for purpose.  As well as the equipment not being up to scratch there were basic communications failures across the board.

I actually know somebody who was on the train that day and I got a text from them that night saying Eurostar need to have some of your customer service training courses in place before this happens again!

According to my friend on one of the trains in the tunnel the communication failure was total.  Staff did not seem to be communicating with each other at all and were certainly not working as a team, which we all know is vital in customer service, especially when things go wrong.

Not only were the staff not communicating with each other they were also not sharing any information with the passengers either.  In the words of my friend “everyone just went missing, the staff seemed to be hiding as they seemed to be afraid they had no new information to impart and were in fact as much in the dark as we were!”  Apparently no one seemed to be in charge either, no one was leading the team in other words.

In the past on this blog we have talked about the tough getting going when the going gets tough.  It can be quite straightforward to provide excellent customer service when everything is running smoothly but it is when things go wrong that you get the real test.

I think it is obvious that Eurostar failed on this spectacularly and they went missing.  Everyone involved who was representing Eurostar in some way hid and left the passengers confused and in some cases frightened.  Apparently several people felt very uneasy about being trapped in a tunnel under water and I think I can sympathise with this.

So Eurostar has some work to do.  First and foremost they will have to repair and replace both their on board communications systems and also they will need to go through an extensive internal investigation into what went wrong in terms of customer service.  Once they have quickly identified what went wrong they need to then act quickly to avoid this problem in the future.

The company will need to put in place a robust communications strategy for when things go wrong and staff need to be given the basic skills to communicate with each other and the passengers, even if they don’t have any new information to impart.  Customers are much more sympathetic to a member of staff if they are not hiding and are even seen to be in it with them and doing all they can to make everyone’s lives a little bit more comfortable.

Even if you have no new information this still needs to be communicated to passengers to keep them up-to-date with events and reassure them that you are in control.  Remember anyone who is traveling with you, if you are an airline, a taxi or a train is putting a very high level of trust in your ability to get them there safely.  Now things can and do go wrong but at the very least passengers should feel reassured that someone is in control of the situation.

As well as putting in place a more robust “disaster plan” it is vital that the key bedrocks of customer service, leadership and teamwork are worked on until it is simply second nature.

Here at GA Training we would love the opportunity to work with Eurostar to help address some of the challenges they face and we have in fact written to them along these lines a month or so ago but as yet we have heard nothing back – there must be a problem with their communications!!