Comms in a crisis
PAUL STEPHEN goes behind the scenes at Avanti West Coast, to learn how train operators have been communicating a tidal wave of COVID-19-related guidance and instructions to ensure the safety of rail staff and passengers
Meet the team at Avanti West Coast who ensure COVID safety messages are communicated to staff and passengers.
To say that the past few months have been difficult for society would be an understatement.
Faced with the most significant public health crisis in a century, we have all felt the far-reaching effects of the Government’s response to the outbreak of COVID-19, in the form of social distancing regulations and lockdown of the economy.
As far as the railway is concerned, at the end of March a network that had been groaning under the weight of record passenger numbers rapidly became a no-go zone for all but key workers.
And while NHS, social care and supermarket workers were among those to quite rightly receive much praise for their brave and selfless response to the unfolding emergency, railway staff were also being singled out for their magnificent efforts to keep key workers and vital freight flows on the move ( RAIL 903).
Five months on, their individual and collective contributions remain just as highly valued as travel restrictions are eased, and we slowly establish a new and safe way to go about our business while also keeping COVID-19 at bay.
To achieve this formidable task, Government has set out guidance for making workplaces, retail, hospitality, leisure, recreational and all other shared facilities ‘COVID-secure’.
This includes guidance designed to enable rail passengers and staff to stay safe and to protect fellow users on the network as train loadings tentatively begin to rise again.
Some of these new arrangements are devolved matters for the governments of Scotland and Wales, but a suite of new operating procedures is now commonplace on all parts of the network - including new signage to facilitate social distancing and enhanced cleaning regimes on trains and at stations.
But once this guidance has been issued by the Department for Transport, Rail Delivery Group and other relevant organisations such as the Office of Rail and Road, there is another crucial but largely unseen step before it reaches many of the staff and passengers for whom it is ultimately intended.
Providing that link is an army of ‘back office’ communications, media, public relations and marketing professionals. Their job is to translate and then disseminate the information contained within these weighty documents into easily understood instructions for users of the network to follow.
In most cases, the natural conduits of that information are either Network Rail or a train operating company (TOC), depending on which company manages the station and which TOC is operating the train service that you happen to be using.
To get a flavour of how that process works,
RAIL caught up with Avanti West Coast (AWC) for a glimpse into this hidden world.
As one of the UK’s newest TOCs (it replaced Virgin West Coast on December 8 2019),
AWC was in the midst of building its brand and publicising some of its early franchise commitments when the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
For instance, talk of a new £ 350 million fleet of Class 805s and ‘807s’ on order from Hitachi, plus a freshly signed £ 642m Class 390 ‘Pendolino’ refurbishment and maintenance deal, had to be swiftly abandoned once lockdown commenced.
“We were just four months in and about to press the accelerator on brand and proactive messaging, and then ‘bang’,” says AWC Regional Communication Manager Richard Stanton
“As a TOC it hit us quite hard because we were working on lots of things and then suddenly the focus shifted to one thing only.”
AWC Head of Brand Kate Squires adds: “It was definitely a career first to be discouraging people from using the product that the brand is famous for, but it was also what we wanted to tell people because we knew it was the right thing.
“We all resoundingly agreed that we had to put the customer first, and there is no doubt that we would ever encourage travel if it wasn’t safe to do so. Whether that’s for Coronavirus or not, safety has always been our number one priority and always will, so although it was really foreign to actively discourage people from travel, it didn’t go against gut instinct.”
Fortunately, the almost overnight change in direction was slightly tempered by the fact that the rail industry had already been issuing sensible advice to passengers on matters such as hand washing, in the days and weeks that immediately preceded the official announcement from Prime Minister Boris Johnson to ‘Stay at Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives’ on March 23.
But much harder to prepare for was the sheer volume of information that was soon emanating from Government, and the need to quickly establish what sweeping nationwide announcements meant for individual areas of the economy in advance of bespoke sectoral guidance being developed.
“We were in a position where we’d been doing some lighter Coronavirus messaging before lockdown hit, for at least a month,” says AWC Head of Internal Communications Adrian Lowther.
“When we got to the critical moment, we were warmed up on the topic. But nobody is ever prepared for the level and scale of change in that moment.
“Having said that, we knew that we had really good strong internal comms channels, and good ways of working with other parts of the business that meant we were able to quickly start translating government policy into railway policy by working with the RDG and other parts of FirstGroup.”
Lowther adds: “I’m not going to pretend that this wasn’t a challenge, because it was a fast-moving environment and policy wasn’t necessarily written with the railway in mind, but more broadly.”
While discussions were under way between operators, the RDG and Government to plot a way forward, other immediate tasks were identified and then executed - such as the cancellation of all advertising that AWC had planned to undertake both internally and externally.
AWC’s social media team also swung into action, answering a deluge of enquiries while both it and the marketing team also took more proactive steps to inform customers of the changes that were being made.
AWC Marketing & Communications Manager Catrin Williams explains: “After beginning the franchise in December, we were running our initial advertising campaign and were busy working on a new campaign to run throughout the summer.
“For a new brand it was going to be the first big push with a new TV campaign behind it, so there was a lot of running around to see what we could cancel or postpone.
“The priority shifted very quickly to how we could support the customer with messaging that supported their questions at that time. There was a huge amount of information coming from government and the media, and a lot of uncertainty, so we had to make it really clear to customers what they could [and could not] do around travel.”
To ensure that all TOCs were consistent
Safety has always been our number one priority and always will.
Kate Squires,
Head of Brand, Avanti West Coast
We were able to quickly start translating government policy into railway policy.
Adrian Lowther,
Head of Internal Communications, Avanti West Coast
in the information that they were providing to passengers, the RDG distributed a toolkit of key messaging and answers to frequently asked questions, updated on a daily basis.
That toolkit then provided the basis for emails sent out to the AWC customer database and for the information provided by social media teams amid a surge in online activity.
Such was the appetite for information that the open rates for automated pre-departure emails climbed to more than 70% (against an average of 20%-30%).
Meanwhile, the AWC Coronavirus travel information webpage has had almost 400,000 views since the middle of March, with the average time spent on page about two and a half minutes.
More than 45,000 incoming messages were received by AWC over social media during March, with an average response time of less than eight minutes. And the number of refunds climbed four-fold to almost 400,000 between February and March - with most paid out within 15 days.
Harry Gill, head of social media customer service, says: “I only joined the business on April 20 so it was a bit of a baptism of fire. We were getting lots and lots of questions coming through, but we would never second guess any information because it had to be absolutely right.
“If we were unsure, then we could liaise internally or with other organisations to get that information and then pass it on as quickly as we could.”
The challenges faced by operators across the UK were quickly compounded by the fact that announcements by Government could come without warning, with next to no time until changes in policy had to come into force.
There was also some divergence in what regulations would apply to England-only and which would apply to Scotland and Wales. This was an issue of particular relevance to AWC and its cross-border routes to Glasgow and north Wales.
AWC also had to keep more than 3,500 members of staff abreast of any changes, with a large proportion of them based at home and away from their usual places of work, working on reduced hours or in self-isolation.
Lowther says: “We were very mindful of the need to tell our colleagues about our plans first so that they knew before our customers or the media, because they are the team who have to implement things.
“They have to be clear and confident, whether that be on social media or in person, so we had to get that right in order to enable the next part of the chain to happen.
“But we were fairly confident in our digital systems, so that even if a colleague doesn’t have a company-issued mobile phone they could still access the app to get all the relevant information. Page views on our news app for colleagues went up by 133% in March, while interactions on Yammer [AWC’s internal social
network] also increased by 53%.”
AWC also found creative and fun ways to get passengers to engage with the important information that was being issued - such as the design of retro posters that played on the romantic and pleasant feelings that people associate with rail travel, while also delivering hard-hitting messages not to travel.
Meanwhile, AWC MD Phil Whittingham had the innovative idea to unveil a Pendolino with a face covering vinyl, to remind people of the new rules that came into force in England on June 15.
Morale-raising videos were posted on YouTube - including Crewe staff member Michael singing We’ll Meet Again and Train Manager Simon dressed as a Tyrannosaurus Rex at Euston.
AWC also worked hard to present passenger information in a branded format, with a suite of assets and iconography created using bespoke fonts and colours.
Squires adds: “We have a fantastic design studio in-house and have utilised brand assets to enable us to deliver communications in a really calm but effective manner.
“The reason we chose to do this was because we were acutely aware that Coronavirus communications were coming from left, right and centre. There were emails landing in everybody’s inbox every minute of the day.
“Some people were using hazard tape or bright yellow or red, which can be quite startling, so we wanted to create a calm palette that was easy for our customers and colleagues to identify using our key colours of graphene, Solway breeze and white, and then orange to pull out the key messages.”
Such was the effectiveness of the ‘do not travel’ message that passenger numbers plummeted by an estimated 95% in the weeks that followed March 23.
But with large parts of the economy now reopened, timetables largely restored to prepandemic levels, and passengers in England now permitted to return to train travel for any means, the million-dollar question has become: how can the industry attract rail users back to the network?
There is an understandable wariness within the population to expose themselves to the perceived risks of using public transport, or to put themselves into a possible situation of overcrowding.
AWC and many other operators have therefore responded by entering into a period of providing reassurance that rail travel is safe, while analysts keep a weather eye on emerging trends such as reservations, travel patterns and use of available train capacity.
“Although restrictions are being lifted, we’re still under emergency measures so we need to be reassuring customers and making sure that safety is a top priority,” explains Williams.
“One of the key challenges from a comms perspective is finding that balance so that we’re not stimulating travel sooner than is appropriate.
“We’re supporting the Travel Safe Pledge and other key messages about travelling at quieter times, and want to manage expectations so that passengers know what to expect on their journey, but not in a way that’s scary or off-putting.
“People are worried about doing the wrong thing, so we want to make sure that customers feel comfortable and that we’re ready whenever they are. We certainly don’t want to push people to do that sooner than they’re ready to.”
Meanwhile, plans are being drawn up in the background so that AWC is ready to stimulate travel quickly and effectively when the time is right and when a shift in public mood and confidence in rail travel can be detected.
Exactly when the operator is able to get back on the front foot remains to be seen, but there are certainly no signs of the enthusiasm or energy of the team at AWC beginning to flag or fail.
Lowther concludes: “I think we’re probably all a bit stronger as a result of some of these challenges. As a team working together, imagine what we can do having gone through all this.
“We’re not going to forget these lessons in a hurry. And if we can do things like a weird and wacky train wrap in just eight days, then I think that the art of the possible has just been redefined.”
The priority shifted very quickly to how we could support the customer with messaging that supported their questions at that time.
Catrin Williams,
Marketing & Communications Manager, Avanti West Coast