CASE STUDY
the list goes on,” said Sullivan. “The Virgin
brand has always been about innovation
and we’re trying to be inventive in improving
the entire train experience.”
We asked Sullivan some further questions
about the implementation.
How does a positive customer
experience correlate with
business success?
I have always believed that happy customers
come back and unhappy customers don’t.
To prove that point, we can take a look into
my first project at Virgin Trains – Automatic
Delay Repay (ADR). I was bold enough
to present to the Board that if we paid
customers their due travel compensation, it
would pay back in terms of repeat journey
being higher. You may not know this, but if
your train is 30 minutes late, you are due
50% of the ticket value back. If it is 60
minutes late, you are due a full refund. A
number of customers cannot be bothered
to complete the paperwork or do not know
about the delay repay scheme, so they do
not get the money back they are due.
• Firstly, to start to drive digital
innovation for the benefit of both
customers and colleagues
• Secondly, to replace the current IT
infrastructure with modern IT. I knew this
was critical as in the rail industry ‘change’
was slow, so we needed to be far more
agile, but to do so we needed the right
tech platform
I was very aware that modern technologies
such as AI and ML do not deliver results
by themselves. To make best use of these
technologies, we need a modern and solid
IT foundation to ensure underlying data sets
are complete, timely and accurately.
I believe that a successful CIO will
understand the need to prioritise putting the
right modern platform in place and not just
continue to add applications.
How has the solution specifically
enabled employees to work
more efficiently?
How important is having a modern
IT infrastructure? We are a ServiceNow-connected enterprise
with the application being used in 17
departments, automating tasks and ensuring
that the flow of data across our teams is of
the highest quality.
Critical. When I first joined Virgin Trains, we
set out a portfolio of projects that were in
two categories: For many years, I have been surprised at how
complex business applications are, so the
simplification we have been able to deliver
www.intelligentcio.com
has been a huge help for my colleagues. This
is particularly important at Virgin Trains as
the rail industry is so complex, so by adding
in a complex application, the need to make
work easier at Virgin Trains was critical.
We are finding that now my colleagues have
a bit more time, they can help customers with
a complex issue and this is even connected
to our JAM initiative, which stands for ‘Just
a Minute’, and can be presented by anyone
with a ‘hidden disability’ to show they need
more time to communicate with our team.
How do you ascertain the level of
customer satisfaction you expect to
achieve by this time next year?
You may have seen recently that Virgin
Trains recorded the highest passenger
satisfaction rating of any franchised train
operator in Britain, which may be just
months before we lose control of the West
Coast route.
I expect our satisfaction to continue
to increase over the next few months,
regardless of our franchise position, which is
due to our fantastic culture ‘Screw Average
and Create Amazing’ initiatives.
There is a lot more to come from our new
system and I cannot think of a better
example of using digital technology to
improve the customer experience. n
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