Yet another great example of customer service
 

Apologies in advance for the long thread.
Yesterday (sunday) I went to the station in Portarlington to buy a weekly train ticket to save me queuing up this morning. I went in at about half 3 and there was an old woman there (practically blue from the cold - it's fairly drafty there at the ticket desk!) who had been waiting for half an hour to purchase a ticket for the Galway train and was getting worried about what might happen if she didn't get one before the train arrived. I knocked on the staff door and called out etc but there was nobody to be seen. Went out to the platform in case they were out there but unfortunately not. Tried ringing the phone there which I could see through the window, but it came up engaged.
I rang 4 different numbers in Heuston including one from 11850 which they described as a sunday customer service line. No answer anywhere. Got some numbers from Connolly, no answer there either. Eventually got through by dialling 8366222 and enquired if there were staff in Portarlington station, was put on hold. 10 minutes later while still on hold finally a car pulled up with a member of staff. The old woman had given up at this stage so there was me and a few others. I went to get my ticket and here is the conversation:

Me: Just wondering, were you gone on a break? We've been waiting for around half an hour, a few people left
Him: You'll need to take it up with someone else, I don't start until 4
Me: Oh right, was someone else supposed to be here then?
Him: Look, I just told you, I don't start until 4, take it up with someone else.
Me: Well could you not have put up a notice on the window?
Him: Are you f**king deaf? I said I don't start until 4, I get paid from 4 and not before that
Me: Well maybe you or someone could have used a bit of initiative and stuck up some sort of opening hours sign, it's pathetic.
Him: Yeah whatever, take it up with someone else

I went on to tell him how I thought IE was a complete joke etc and wouldn't it be great if we could all work like IE staff do.
Now I admit I wasn't very polite to him either, but I didn't curse and was just so shocked at his attitude and the way I was spoken to, totally unbelievable.

Wow! nice guy.

According to this
http://www.iarnrodeireann.ie/your_jo...tatio n_id=99

Portarlington station is open from 9am til 10:30pm on Sundays and Bank holidays.

I'd see about complaining about this in writing and when Irish rail don't respond within a short timeframe, keep us posted here.

See how many points of the customer charter they have failed
http://www.iarnrodeireann.ie/home/customer_charter.asp

I have every intention of writing to Irish Rail about it and I'll let you know what I get back if anything.
I also meant to point out that I couldn't use the ticket machine either as it doesn't do weekly tickets which seems a bit stupid

Hmmm, I wonder was it the same guy that pissed me off last January? Young-ish guy? I posted my experience on the forum back then:

http://forum.platform11.org/showthread.php?t=193&page=6
(Post #104)

All I can say is after moaning about PSP man in Seapoint, who is seriously difficult to deal with on this forum he has vanished in the last week, either it was us or the resident senior IE manager who uses the station but it appears it has been 'eliminated'

The its not my problem line is crap, you are the face representing your company everything is your problem, sure its not his fault the other guy was on the mitch or whatever but still the 'not my problem bud' line isn't acceptable

In any business abusive language towards customer == P45 and I'd love to see them try a unfair dismissal case..

Im so sorry, but as Im under the weather health wise, the mind doesn't think very straight. Nest time try this on him....

Attachment 513

Problem solved!

I can't tell you how tempted I was to do that!!

Small-ish, heavy, young-ish blond fella?

tip 1: turn on mobile phone recorder [ most of them have them ] and record the conversation ...


tip2 ; ask for the name ; if they won't give it ask for the supervisor's name and number

Well if its anything like the DB 'I'm not giving my name to no one' attitiude - he should be easily identifiable to the company from their rota or equivalent, with time & date - as he said - he started at 4.

Finally received a response from Irish rail.

Fairly disappointing reply I thought!

Well within the 4 week deadline :D

Ah, yes. Exceptional circumstances. Amazing co-incidence.

They say the office was closed for a long period 'due to exceptional circumstances'. And what might they be exactly?

I agree, it's not a great letter, very cut and paste looking.

Well it reads as a classic arse cover letter, passenger has got us in a corner hide hide hide. By now the two Liam's could/should know better

Note of course the lack of a plug for investment which is the classic copy and paste paragraph. Of course IE aren't investing a single euro in customer service training, well they might be but it sure isn't being experienced on the ground.

To be fair to IT-Girl, that may have formed the next three pages of the reply........

There was a second page (of very high quality paper I might add!! They must have a lot of money left over from the overpriced tickets) with nothing else except a signature of Melissa Quirke.

A few of the points I brought up in my letter to them were not addressed, overall I find it a very poor response!

Or maybe I should just be grateful I got any sort of acknowledgement at all.

I attach my original complaint.

IT Girl, Would the points IE didn't answer be the ones they couldn't answer cos they were caught rotten. I got a high quality paper reply to my complaint that avoided all the points that nailed them...

Probably the same school of PR as our fine elected representatives use...

It is an excellent letter of complaint

The problems are directly related to publicly stated Irish Rail customer service commitments, it leaves Irish Rail with no avenue of escape. The details given are specific enough to clearly identify the member of staff involved. If only more complaints where like that we really could start to twist the minds of IE staff

You should have got an acknowledgment within 5 working days and a response within 15 working days in 90% of cases. You didn't and to be honest everyone seems to be in that 10%

Now I've done some sniffing around and discovered that IE have a customer relationship management system called MySAP....... need I say more

Well we had SAP in my old company, it can do many things, despite a rubbish name!

To be honest customer service has nothing to do with computer systems - other than maybe to log and remind you of issues - its about people who know what they're talking about, an acceptance of responsibility and willingness to learn from the points raised.