National Rail Enquiries - About Us

National Rail Enquiries (NRE) is the definitive source of information for all passenger rail services on the National Rail network in England, Wales and Scotland. NRE is part of the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC), which is responsible for providing business services to the Train Operating Companies.

Introduction

NRE handles an average of 1.1 million journey enquiries every day either through their contact centres or self service channels.

The NRE website offers journey planning, timetable and fares information and provides a range of rail-related information to rail passengers and is classified by the Government as a super-site.

Our History

Following the privatisation of British Rail in 1996, all Train Companies (TOCs) were required to offer a telephone enquiry service to members of the public to call for information about travelling by train. National Rail Enquiries was formed and took responsibility for all the telephone enquiry bureaus that were spread across the National Rail network.

To make finding information about rail travel as simple as possible, a single local rate telephone number was established – 0845 7 48 49 50 - which directed the caller to their nearest telephone enquiry bureaux. The business was later streamlined, with the many bureaus merged to become regional contact centres.

In 2003, the National Rail Enquiries website was launched.

The future

As more and more people choose to travel by train, the need for the railway industry to provide fast, accurate and impartial information has never been so important. National Rail Enquires is leading the way in maximising communications technology to provide access to information, both in advance of travel and during journeys.

With technology and the demands of information-savvy customers ever-changing, it’s vital that NRE continue to improve the provision of timely information to passengers – however, whenever and by whatever media they want it.

Funding

ATOC is formed of a number of Schemes to manage particular items of business (such as through ticketing, NRE and Rail Staff Travel) where the train operating companies are required to work together. NRE is such a scheme.

Each scheme member makes a financial contribution to the service, depending on the number of passenger using the services of the scheme. The schemes are governed by their own independent councils, which elects management groups to handle the day-to-day operations of the Scheme.

Organisation

The head of each NRE team reporting to the Chief Executive. The Chief Executive reports to National Rail Enquiries Board and the Chief Executive of the ATOC.

The teams within NRE are:

• Passenger Information – responsible for the ongoing provision of concise, consistent and accurate information which is delivered through NRE’s information channels

• Online Services – responsible for the strategic development and day-to-day operation of NRE’s self-service systems

• Contact Centres – responsible for the strategic development and day-to-day operation of NRE’s contact centres in the UK and India

• Commercial – responsible for the day-to-day and strategic financial planning for NRE

• Business Development - responsible for improving the reputation of NRE across the industry. Also leads the strategic development of NRE’s relationships with TOCs/third-parties, whilst increasing their usage of NRE services.

Real time information – Powered by Darwin

‘Darwin’ is the source of information that feeds all of NRE’s real time services, providing predictions and actual train movements across the National Rail network in real time.

Darwin takes the scheduled timetable and enriches it with real time train movement information from across the network. It also receives messages about cancellations and alterations that are sent from Train Company control offices.

The NRE services that Darwin feeds:

• Journey Planner
• SMS Alerts – sent to customers who have subscribed to receive them
• TrainTracker™ - National Rail Enquiries’ real time automated voice recognition service
• TrainTracker™ Text – an SMS version of the Journey Planner
• Live Departure Boards - a web-based station departure board
• Contact Centre Journey Planner (CCJP) – the powerful journey planning system used by the contact centres
• Customer Information Systems (CIS) – provided to some Train Companies, businesses and local authorities
• National Rail Enquiries for iPhone application

The National Rail Communication Centre (NRCC)

What does the NRCC do?

The NRCC plays a vital role in the NRE operation, by acting as a clearing house for information sent from Train Companies, which generally contains railway jargon and acronyms.

Editing the TOC message and publishing in a customer-friendly way, ensures information reaches passengers in a way they can understand. The NRCC receives information from the TOCs and Network Rail by:

• The control room messaging system
• Telephone
• Email
• Telephone conference

What does the NRCC do during service disruption?

The NRCC provides a customer-friendly summary of the incident, the impact and advice to enable passengers to make an informed choice about their travel plans. This is presented in the following format:

• Problem – the cause of disruption / train or line of route involved
• Impact – what the service is doing / amount of delay in minutes
• Advice - any alterations to service / what passengers should do
  

This information is provided through the following channels:

• Service Disruption area of the National Rail Enquiries website
• Journey Planner Bulletins are applied to relevant journeys (bulletins are pieces of textual information that are attached to either trains, stations or lines of route)
• Live Departure Board messages are applied to each station affected by the disruption giving a headline summary of the disruption
• Email to the media, ensuring that information being given through the radio and television is consistent with that given by NRE.

The NRCC also manages changes to train schedules in Darwin. This ensures that all real time systems powered by Darwin hold accurate data. These systems are:

Engineering Work

When the NRCC receives information about engineering work, they check that the amended services are showing correctly in the Journey Planning systems. Any errors or omissions are fed back to Network Rail and the TOCs to resolve.

They then publish a customer-friendly summary of the work enabling passengers to make an informed choice about their travel plans. This is presented in the following format:

• Location - the location of the work/ line of route involved
• Impact - any alterations to service / length of extended journey times
• Advice - what passengers should do

This information is provided through the following channels:

• Future Engineering Work area of the National Rail Enquiries website
• Journey Planner Bulletins are applied to relevant journeys (bulletins are pieces of textual information that are attached to either trains, stations or lines of route)

Retail Information

The NRCC is key to NRE's ability to provide reliable, impartial and consistent retail information across all of NRE's channels. These are:

• National Rail Enquiries website
• A staff Knowledgebase
• LISA, the Virtual Assistant
• Ticket Information
• NRE contact centres

Station Information Pages

The NRE website has station facilities information pages, giving detailed information about all stations on the National Rail network.

Each TOC is responsible for updating the information about the stations that they manage.

Special Offers and Rangers & Rovers

NRE have a dedicated area of the website for Special Offers and Ranger & Rover tickets. Using this information, the Journey Planner will highlight appropriate rangers/rovers or special offers, should this be the most suitable fare for the journey.

Contact Centre Adviser Briefings

It’s important that the Contact Centre advisers are kept up to date with information about TOC’s services. TOCs will send information to the NRCC, who will arrange for the advisers to be briefed if appropriate.

Buying tickets in Advance

NRE now show information about Buying Advance tickets and reserving seats, providing a summary of the farthest travel dates in the future where it is possible to reserve seats and buy Advance tickets today.

Services provided to rail passengers

Contact Centre - 08457 48 49 50

The telephone service provided by National Rail Enquiries is the busiest telephone number in the United Kingdom.

Call answering statistics

Between 1st April and 31 March 2009:

NRE has two contact centres – one in Wath-upon-Dearne, South Yorkshire and one in Mumbai, India. Both are operated by a third party supplier on their behalf.

The contact centre advisers have the very latest technology at their finger tips – the Contact Centre Journey Planner (CCJP) gives advisers the same consistent information that is available to passengers on the website including availability of Advance tickets and ‘replanning’ of disrupted journeys.

Combining this new technology with a passion in providing the highest quality services, NRE have seen a significant increase in the success measures. Using external and impartial auditors, NRE monitor the contact centre service in the following ways:

Customer Satisfaction

• An independent company conducts a continuous survey on customer satisfaction monthly. The latest survey result done between January 09 and March 09 was 90% of our customers would recommend NRE to family and friends.

Mystery Shopping

• The world's leading independent mystery shopping company, Taylor Nelson Sofres conducts mystery shop calls to each of NRE's call centres. For the period covering 12th October 2008 to 31st March 2009, NRE answered 99.29% of calls correctly on this measure.

Self Service Channels

National Rail Enquiries Website

The National Rail Enquiries website was launched in 2003, and offered passengers train time and fare information.

Since the website was launched, many new features have been introduced:

Real Time Journey Planner – www.nationalrail.co.uk

The Journey Planner allows users to find the best journey options between any two National Rail locations. Using complex rules to find suitable journeys, the latest release of the Journey Planner allows users to:

• plan a journey to, from and via any National Rail location
• quickly see if their journey is being disrupted (on the day of travel) and choose to see suitable alternative journeys
• register to receive SMS text message alerts about delays to trains – either as a ‘one off’ request or for the same trains over a longer period of time
• view availability of ‘quota controlled’ fares, so the customer knows exactly what tickets are available at the time of the enquiry
• search for a specific fare for trains over a range of dates, on which a specific fare is available
• find comprehensive ticket terms & conditions, as well as ticket route information - the customer knows when and where the ticket can be used
• discover special offers that may be associated with the requested journey
• see the range of add-on fares – such as London Travelcards – that may be available
• produce their own personalised [/pockettimetable ‘Pocket Timetable’] which they can print out and carry with them
• insert the train times into a calendar system, like Microsoft Outlook
• find the prices of season tickets for appropriate journeys for seven days and any period between one month and a year.

The journey planner is available to users of WAP and PDA devices.

Live Departure Boards – livedepartureboards.co.uk

National Rail Enquiries’ Live Departure Boards service is a web-based representation of the departure and arrival line up for every station on the National Rail network. Using information from Darwin, it provides scheduled, expected and actual train times.

Additionally, if bus or boat services are included in the timetable system for the station, the scheduled departures are also shown within the Live Departure Boards display.

Being web based, Live Departure Boards offers users a flexible and easy to use interface. Users can see the current situation at a particular station or navigate to get full information about a specific train.

Live Departure Boards is available to users of WAP and PDA devices.

Text message alerting 

NRE offer a simple web and text-based solution to easily inform passengers of delays or cancellations of specific trains.

The Darwin-powered SMS alerting service allows customers to easily choose the trains to be updated about, and once they have selected a few simple options about when they’d like to receive the alert, the customer can sit back and relax in the knowledge that should anything happen to the running of their train, they’ll receive a SMS text message to let them know.

Knowledgebase

The National Rail Enquiries Knowledgebase offers user a wealth of useful information about rail travel.

There are two versions of Knowledgebase – through the website to customers and to staff in contact centres and tickets offices across the network.

NRE have developed a range of simplifiers to help front line staff in booking offices and telesales/customer service centres handle enquiries from the travelling public.

Features include:

• the same information available to customers about service disruption and engineering work
• access to the National Rail Station Facilities database
• detailed information about Special Offers and Ranger & Rovers
• a calendar of events affecting the National Rail network
• a diary page, giving continuous updates of issues affecting railway retailing
• a GroupSave simplifier and diary to help advisers sell GroupSave tickets and be aware when GroupSave has been barred for travel
• an Excess Fares calculator, to help advisers understand and calculate excess fares
  

 LISA, the Virtual Assistant

‘Lisa’ is a state of the art Virtual Assistant – the world’s first video-based assistant. She is available on the National Rail Enquiries homepage for customers to use 24-hours a day, 365 days a year.

• What does Lisa do?

Working for National Rail Enquiries, she has extensive knowledge about travelling by train – from helping choose the best ticket for a journey, to telling customers about the facilities that are available at all National Rail stations. She can even take a customer’s journey information and plan a journey for them in the web-based Journey Planner!

She can now interrogate the wealth of information in the station information database, and give no answer customers directly about the facilities at stations across the network.

• How good is she?

Lisa is always learning. She started working for National Rail Enquiries in July 2007 and has developed a huge knowledge of things to do with the railway.

NRE regularly review the conversations that Lisa has with people, so they know where there are gaps in her knowledge. On average, she currently answers over 94% of rail-related questions correctly – no mean feat for a computer powered virtual assistant!

• Is she busy?

Lisa can have conversations with many customers at a time - she is the busiest and most functional Virtual Assistant on the planet. She speaks to an average of 2,500 customers and answering nearly 10,000 questions every day, dealing with very complicated enquiries for customers including planning journeys in the web-based Journey Planner.

During the week of the severe snow fall in February 2009, she spoke to 31,151 customers and answered 125,844 questions!

• What’s she got planned?

She will soon be able to streamline the online complaints procedure, reducing the impact of emailed complaints to the Customer Relations team.

TrainTracker™ - 0871 200 49 50

TrainTracker™ uses the latest in speech recognition and text-to-speech technologies to provide an automated enquiry service.

You can call TrainTracker™ on 0871 200 49 50.

It allows callers to:

• plan any journey within the next 12 weeks
• plan multi-leg journeys
• hear ‘real time’ service disruption information, with information taken directly from Darwin, presented using the latest ‘text-to-speech’ technology
• ‘replan’ a journey should one or more of the trains be delayed or cancelled
• hear details of available tickets and fare options for all journeys on the National Rail network
• be transferred to a National Rail Enquiries adviser if they need help or be transferred to the appropriate telesales department to buy a ticket, if they choose.

The success of TrainTracker™ is clear - 85% of callers would recommend it to their family and friends.

And whenever TrainTracker™ struggles to understand what callers say, the call is automatically flagged for review. The service is continuously updated to improve performance, including improved recognition of regional accents and dialects.

If TrainTracker™ is unable to recognise the caller, callers can use their telephone keypad to input their request or be transferred to a National Rail Enquiries Customer Advisor to handle their enquiry.

TrainTracker™ Text

TrainTracker™ Text offers the same robust journey planning system as the web-based Journey Planner and TrainTracker™ services, but through text message to a mobile telephone. Users can receive train times from three hours in the past to twenty-one hours in the future.

Simply text your journey details to 8 49 50, using station name or codes and the time.

Examples

• For the next few departures from a particular station:
  • dep [station name/code]
    (Example: dep leicester or dep rdg)

• For the next few arrivals at a particular station.
  • arr [station name/code]
    (Example: arr leicester or arr rdg)

• Advanced Request – as above, but add one or more of the following:
  • to/from [station name/code] - for the next few departures from a particular station, to or from a particular station
    (Example: dep leicester to leeds or dep rdg to pad)
• Simply add a time (hhmm) to show trains after a certain time.

Results

Send the following to 8 49 50:

National Rail Enquiries for iPhone

The application enables iPhone users to plan rail journeys between stations anywhere across the National Rail network using our powerful Journey Planner. It will also show, within the results up to the minute details of delays, cancellations and disruptions and the effect they are likely to have on planned journeys.

And that’s not all, National Rail Enquiries for iPhone offers a host of other services including:

• The ability to view live departures and arrivals at all National Rail stations and live train progress information including, where available, the platform number each train will be using
• Journey Planner search results are automatically saved in the iPhone so they can be viewed when mobile network coverage is not available
• If a connection is cancelled or running late the Journey Planner will suggest an alternative train or route
• iPhone maps provide clear directions showing the quickest route from the customer’s current location to the nearest station anywhere in the UK
• Customers can store their favourite stations in the iPhone, so they are quickly available at the touch of a button
• Using GPS technology to locate the nearest stations to where the customer is currently located, a quick click and the station can be selected as the origin or destination
• Once the customer has set their ‘home station’, clicking the “Next Train Home” button will use GPS technology to find their nearest station and give them details of the next few trains home.

What else does National Rail Enquiries do?

Passenger Information Strategy Group (PISG)

High quality passenger information is key to driving up confidence in using rail. Several research studies have highlighted the increasing need for up-to-date information to be available consistently at all times and across all channels of communication – during normal service, when there are changes to the advertised timetable and during disruption.

To make sure the industry has focus on improving information provision, the Passenger Information Strategy Group (PISG) was formed. The PISG’s primary objective is to establish good practice within each area where there is a direct interface with passengers and roll this out across the industry, whether off station, on station or on train.

The group has identified good practice in a number of ways; carrying out a detailed study of information provision across all TOCs as well as Network Rail stations, conducted research studies and held focus groups with staff and passengers. The outcome of all of this work has led to the writing of a suite of Good Practice Guides.

The group facilitates the development and delivery of good practice initiatives within these guides in order to achieve the Industry’s Vision for Passenger Information:

"As an industry we will provide timely, relevant, accurate and
consistent information – easily understandable and accessible
wherever, whenever and however required – so that all passengers
can make informed choices about their travel plans."

The PISG contains representatives from ATOC, National Rail Enquiries, Train Operating Companies (TOCs), Network Rail and Passenger Focus.

Key to keeping good practice up-to-date is understanding passengers’ priorities and their changing requirements in how they receive and perceive information. To make sure that good practice reflects this, the PISG continues to facilitate focus groups with passengers to understand what these requirements are.

After severe disruptive events the PISG holds Severe Incident Reviews (SIR). The objective of the reviews is to ascertain how well the Industry performed against current good practice and to identify any further opportunities for identification of good practice. Accordingly, the output of each SIR consists of a list of recommendations for PISG ratification. The outcome of which is written into the Good Practice Guides to improve information provision in the future.

Provide information services to Train Companies

NRE offers many of the technologies we use to TOCs in a ‘white label’, which means that TOCs can show our consistent and reliable information, but with their own colour schemes, logos and other branding. For example, many TOCs use their Live Departure Boards service, but with their own branding.

NRE also offers service disruption, engineering work and station ‘information feeds’. This ensures that the information shown on our website about service disruption and engineering work affecting their customers and the stations they manage is consistent on their own web site too.

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