On the tracks of customer information: coordination during engineering works
When evaluating our services, customer information plays an important role. In this series of articles, we introduce you to motivated employees who are committed to ensuring that you are always well informed at all times, especially during engineering works. Given the importance of a consistent and reliable customer communication, we asked Prunelle to tell us more about her job as coordinator for customer information during engineering works.
For customers who are used to travelling by train, rail closures due to construction may pose some serious challenges. Which options exist? Which sections are affected by the closure? How to reach one’s destination?
These questions, which the CFL is aware of, play an important role in composing their customer information. To keep their customers up to date, the CFL offers a wide range of information channels: the map of the annual infrastructure works, information displays in the railway stations, timetable posters, or the timetable search on www.cfl.lu or in the CFL mobile app – to name but a few examples. In addition to these technical tools provided by the CFL, many CFL employees are in direct contact with customers in the railway and bus stations, in the trains and busses and of course in the ticket offices. These attendants, who need to be excellently informed to be able to answer customer questions, are well appreciated by said customers.
Thus, a new challenge for the CFL has emerged: ensuring that the customer information provided by the CFL is coherent, reliable, and straightforward – independent of the communication channel used. This is where Prunelle, coordinator of customer information during infrastructure work periods, enters.
“At the CFL, customer information is a real team effort that only works if each representative of the professions involved, gives their all.”
Ensuring that the customer remains at the forefront of customer information
“Infrastructure works present a degree of complexity that is unexpected at the first glance,” reveals Prunelle. Indeed, the organisation, planning and implementation of these works are prepared several years in advance and are mostly carried out on a very technical level. Additionally, the terminology used is often incomprehensible to customers.
“My role as coordinator is to ensure that my clients’ needs remain in the forefront of customer information. In other words, my job is to make sure that the customer information transmitted to our clients answers their questions while remaining simple, reliable and, above all, coherent.“
Customer information during construction: a team effort
To meet this challenge, Prunelle coordinates with a working group of experts in the many areas linked to planning, organising, and implementing works, as well as in customer support during construction periods.
Prunelle’s mission is to create a common data-base, from the information provided by this working group. Consequently, it is from this data-base that the customer information will be developed according to the requirements of the chosen communication channels.
Different requirements for different channels
To compose such a message, it is imperative to know the right moment and the right form. In this regard, Prunelle fully trusts the expertise of the people responsible to contribute to the customer information systems. For example, information about the closure of a section or an entire line can be disclosed on the AURIS displays in the stations concerned. The message should be kept to a minimum, so it can be read while passing by. The information about the substitution busses, however, is made available on the CFL website. Signage posts in the railway stations advise customers where the replacement buses will depart from. Information on cancelled trains is found in the timetable search. These are just a few examples of how the basic information, compiled by Prunelle thanks to her group of experts, will be made available for customers’ journeys.
Find out more
Discover Cristina’s job: she accompanies our customers on board of the train.
Discover Michel’s job: he is the man behind the timetable search data.
Discover Lou’s job: he adapts timetables according to infrastructure works.