New Customer Care Centre created by Alstom for Virgin Trains

To help solve problems on the Pendolino fleet more quickly, Alstom is to create a dedicated Customer Care Centre that will allow Virgin train crew to report technical issues in real time.

The new centre, which is cloud-based but which has a physical HQ in Manchester, is being manned between 0600hrs and 2200hrs, seven-days-a-week, with the number of customer care operatives also doubled to six to ensure all calls are answered and dealt with more effectively.

Tim Bentley, Managing Director of Alstom Transport Mainline, said: “We’re committed to ensuring that issues on the Pendolino fleet are fixed as quickly and as seamlessly as possible and believe our new Customer Care Centre will do just that.

“By embracing new technology we’re ensuring our operatives will be able to provide up-to-date advice on how best to deal with the defect swiftly, with the phone menu allowing train crews to talk to the right person at the right time.

“I’m confident that we’ll make what is an already great service even better with this new initiative.”

Gary Hambling, Head of Fleet and Engineering for Virgin Trains said: “I want to give our staff confidence that we are investing in improvements to the technical reporting system, so they can report areas that need attention. We want to be industry leading in the advice and help we provide to our crews to allow them, in turn, to provide world class service to our customers.”

The new system will result in an increase in the hours of cover provided, the ability to receive multiple calls at any one time, and a real time recording of reported defects in Rail_Sys (also allowing the creation of a work order to fix the defect)

The pre-existing team for defect reporting was based in Birmingham at Virgin Control, with the new centre offering increased hours of coverage, a quieter working environment, an increased number of lines and an automated recording system for out-of-hours calls.