NRA Customer Service Excellence winner 2024: East Midlands Railway

East Midlands Railway won the Customer Service Excellence award in the 2024 National rail Awards for its Skegness Summer Service.

Highly Commended recgnitions went to: Govia Thameslink Railway, Thomas Pocklington Trust and Sight Loss Councils (Aira Explorer App); Greater Anglia (We’re All Ears campaign); Greater Anglia and Stadler (Class 745/755 trains).

East Midlands Railway faced a significant challenge last summer, when there was a delay to the cascade of Class 170 rolling stock it was relying on to reinforce its busy seasonal services from Nottingham to Skegness.

Faced by the loss of its Class 156 fleet, which had been used the previous year but was contracted to Northern from May 2023, as well as a 35% reduction in seats from being limited to only three-car ‘170s’, EMR identified 12 core services each day that were likely to encounter capacity problems.

To alleviate overcrowding, the operator used its demand and pricing management system to encourage passengers to use traditionally less-populated services, by making advance purchase tickets cheaper on departures after 1100.

A priority boarding system was also created to further incentivise passengers to book in advance, while EMR also set a capacity limit of 70% on journey planners for advance tickets before advising passengers to book their travel on less busy services.

Additional bus capacity was provided at Grantham, Sleaford and Boston to help manage demand, and capacity numbers were sent daily to frontline teams to enable them to accurately manage queues.

The new way of working had the added benefit of fixing some long-standing passenger complaints, and the operator managed to record its highest customer satisfaction score ever on the route in summer at 88% (a 12% increase on the operator’s average score).

The judges said: “EMR really feel they now understand their bucket and spade customers better than before. The new queueing system is now being tried at St Pancras International and the same approach is being taken during engineering at London Euston or King’s Cross.”

Go to our results story for a list of all the winners at the 2024 National Rail Awards, together with more pictures from the event at the JW Marriott Grosvenor House hotel, Park Lane, London on 12th September.