Media Centre

Encouraging signs for ‘one’ in latest National Passenger Survey

24 Jan 2008

‘one’ railway today welcomed the publication of the Autumn 2007 National Passenger Survey (NPS) results. The NPS results continue to provide a helpful and informative twice-yearly picture of how rail passengers feel about their daily experience when travelling by train. The feedback complements the train operator’s own surveys and customer service sampling exercises, providing more detail about customer expectations and their aspirations for further improvement.

The overall customer satisfaction score for ‘one’ of 75% represents a 3% improvement on the Spring 2007 survey, and although this increase in overall satisfaction is encouraging, the survey highlights that there is still room for improvement in train performance and some areas of customer service to achieve the consistency of service standards passengers expect across the ‘one’ railway network.

The results also provide useful feedback when comparing satisfaction about aspects of service in Autumn 2007 with the scores for the same period in 2006. Passengers are saying that at stations, ticket buying facilities, availability and helpfulness of staff and the overall station environment is continuing to improve, and on trains, the frequency and punctuality of services, and onward connections are improved together with information provision and availability of staff.

Areas where passengers would continue to like to see further improvement include car parking facilities, cleanliness, better toilet facilities and in dealing with delays.

Andrew Chivers, Managing Director ‘one’ railway commented:

“It is pleasing that the latest NPS results show an improvement on the previous half-year ratings. Although this improvement is encouraging and endorses the approach we have been taking in investing in more staff, upgrading stations and trains and in delivering a Joint Performance Improvement Plan in partnership with Network Rail, we recognise there is much more work to be done in meeting our customers’ expectations.

“We take these results very seriously and the areas where passengers are telling us that further improvement is necessary, such as car parking, cleanliness and in dealing with delays are just some of the key issues where we are focusing more investment, better training and partnership working to provide our customers with the high standards of customer service they rightfully expect.”

Notes to Editors

For further information about this press release, please ring the ‘one’ Press Office on 0207 549 5966 / 65 / 64 and ask for Peter Meades, Jill Casswell or Ellen Rossiter. For urgent or out-of-office hours calls, please leave a message by ringing 07623 952612. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

National Express Group PLC is a leading operator of train franchises in the UK with four franchises: c2c, Gatwick Express, ‘one’ including Stansted Express, and National Express East Coast.