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.
NRE handles an average of 1.3 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.
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.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1993 | ATOC formed by the Railways Act |
| 1996 | National Rail Enquiries formed |
| 2002 | Chris Scoggins appointed Chief Executive Officer |
| 2003 | NRE online Journey Planner website launched
Live Departure Boards service launched |
| 2004 | Call centre in Mumbai established
World First: Complex speech recognition system - TrainTracker™ - launched |
| 2005 | World First: TrainTracker™ Text (SMS Enquiry service launched)
Self service enquiries overtook telephone enquiries for the first time |
| 2006 | World First: Real Time journey planner launched through TrainTracker™ |
| 2007 | World First: LISA, the world's first video-based virtual assistant is launched
Pocket Timetable and Season Ticket calculator launched PDA version of Journey Planner launched |
| 2008 | Real time online Journey Planner launched
Services which offer personalisation launched |
| 2009 | "National Rail Enquiries for iPhone application" launched New look NRE Website launched |
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.
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.
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:
‘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:
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 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:
This information is provided through the following channels:
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:
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:
This information is provided through the following channels:
The NRCC is key to NRE's ability to provide reliable, impartial and consistent retail information across all of NRE's channels. These are:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
| Number of calls offered | 16,058,777 |
| Number of calls answered | 15,153,487 |
| Percentage of calls answered (PCA) | 94.4% |
| Average time to answer calls (ATTA) | 21 seconds |
NRE has two contact centres, one in Mumbai and the other in Delhi. 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
Mystery Shopping
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:
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.
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:
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.
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.
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!
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!
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:
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 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