Rail Delivery Group

Profile

Industry: Transport - Rail Customer interactions: 160mill. p.a. Locations: 3,000

Business: Rail Delivery Group is the main source of rail information in Britain, providing passengers with all they need to know about traveling by train.

Challenge: Improving the delivery of information to answer customer inquiries and improve the traveling experience.

Solution: Self-Service IVR, and EckohINFO.

Benefit:

• 24x7x365 availability
• Agents are free to handle more complex calls
• Peak volume spikes are more easily handled

Business

Rail Delivery Group handles one of the UK's busiest and most volatile telephone services with over 160 million customer contacts per annum.

The TrainTracker™ automated telephone solution was developed by Eckoh in 2005 and covers over 3,000 locations including information for trains, metro, ferry, walking, and bus transfers. TrainTracker™ Text was implemented in 2008 to expand the choice of channels available to customers.

Challenge

Over the years they have undertaken a transformational contact strategy review to enhance 24/x7 service availability to its customers. This involved a number of key initiatives including the introduction of multi-channel inquiry services to complement the primary telephone inquiry line including web, WAP, mobile, and SMS.

Their key requirements were to provide a consistent experience across all contact points for the traveling public, improve call handling efficiency, and to be prepared for the unexpected.

Solution

TrainTracker™ text expanded the choice of channels available to its customers. The SMS service has the same journey planning functionality as the automated speech recognition solution, providing live departure and arrival information direct to mobile.

TrainTracker™ Text creates a two-way SMS conversation with additional questions being asked of the user to fill in gaps or disambiguate the information provided.

TrainTracker has proved particularly popular because it's fast, reliable, easy to use, and constantly available. It allows us to manage our business more cost-effectively, by easing pressure on our advisors during peak call times and when rail service disruptions cause call volumes to peak. Chris Scroggins, National Rail Enquiries

Both services are directly linked to real-time information systems that feed station arrival and departure boards. This ensures information accuracy and timeliness. The service will retain a caller's previous request and, using a combination of caller recognition and self-learning capabilities, provide personal information the next time it is used; for example, offering return journey information.

Chris Scoggins, Chief Executive at National Rail Enquiries (part of Rail Delivery Group), said: "National Rail Enquiries is leading the way in maximizing communications technology to provide fast and accurate access to information. With technology and the demands of customers ever-changing, it's vital that we continue to provide timely information to passengers - however, whenever and by what media they want it. Eckoh's expertise, approach, and professionalism are excellent; they delivered us a series of solutions and services designed specifically for the needs of our customers."

Value

On an average day, TrainTracker™ handles 7,000 calls. To date, the telephone service has received 25 million calls and 59 million minutes of traffic with the two-way SMS service having processed over two million text inquiries.

As a hosted solution, it has the scalability to easily cope with any sudden increases in call volumes.

At its busiest, it has dealt with over 100,000 calls in a single day.

TrainTracker™ can accommodate complex journey planning, irrespective of the number of changes or transfers. It provides the fastest journey plan and will clarify two stations with the same name or towns with multiple stations.

Looking Forward

As a solution unique to Eckoh, we recognize that this example is likely a challenge many other enterprise organizations struggle with when they begin tackling payment security within their contact centers. Some organizations may even feel like their only option is to either deploy hardware on-premise – likely disrupting long-term cloud transformation strategies – or only achieve partial PCI DSS de-scoping.

As a result, the methodology innovated for The Client is now part of the Eckoh architecture. In fact, multiple other clients have also taken advantage of this solution, allowing them to maintain their existing telephony architecture while maintaining the strictest possible standard for payment security.

To learn more about how Eckoh secures payments across all engagement channels, please contact one of our trusted advisors.