Southeastern Customer Contact Centre Services 2022-2025

A. Southeastern background

London & South Eastern Railway Limited (trading as 'Southeastern') provides passenger rail services in the South East of England, covering South East London, Kent and East Sussex. We operate one of the busiest and most complex networks in the country, including the UK's only domestic high-speed service.

In 2019, over 3 million passenger journeys were made on our trains each week, across over 12,000 services.

During the Covid-19 pandemic passenger volumes were materially impacted, leading to the majority of UK train operators to amend their franchise agreements with the Department for Transport ("DfT") to ensure continuity. The result of this process means that financial stability has been assured for Southeastern and we expect to commence discussions with the DfT on a medium to long term management contract in the Summer of 2021. This is likely to commence sometime between October 2021 and April 2022 and run for up to six years.

B. Scope context/background

The scope of this opportunity relates to an anticipated initial period of three (3) years commencing from April 2022 (further extension options may be applicable).

Our customer is at the heart of everything we do and customer satisfaction is a top priority. We are committed to providing a safe, reliable, and welcoming service on every journey and it is our mission to provide the best ever passenger experience. We measure this holistically using the National Rail Passenger Survey (NRPS) and our internal Customer Satisfaction Survey (CSS) but in this instance, customer feedback via our contact centre is also critical information.

At present, our Customer Relations team is structured using both in-house and outsourced resources. Southeastern have an inhouse 'head office team' of 11, used for complex cases which is operated Monday to Friday 7am - 5pm. All other services are outsourced, and the call-centre core hours are 7am to 10pm However, a 24/7 service is available to customers with any later/earlier calls to an out of hours call centre. All of our customer service team are currently based within the United Kingdom.

C. Key requirements

✓ Our aim is to deliver industry leading customer services - standing out against other comparable operators in meeting customer needs and always being there when you need to contact us, 24/7.

✓ We need to remain agile and flexible - customer contact volumes have reduced by over 50% in the 2020/21 financial year compared to the prior year. However, we forecast demand recovering significantly and we need to be structured to efficiently and effectively to meet both current and future demand profiles. Appendix 1 outlines volumes in more detail.

✓ Maintain and improve quality - Our First-Time Resolution ("FTR") currently stands at 89.34%. A lot of success has been achieved with our incumbent supplier to improve quality and performance but even highly rates are required to meet our aim.

✓ We want to be knowledgeable and relatable - We are proud of our network and communities we serve and we want our customers to receive assistance from a friendly and credible team who have a great knowledge of our business, our network and the accessibility needs of our customers.

✓ Shifting channels and enabling options - We do not currently offer webchat (or similar) and we would like for this to be introduced as a priority. In addition, we are seeking input from industry experts in a range of on-the-go, live, self-service channels to enable ease of initial contact via mobile devices, which provides easy escalation to a friendly operative where needed.

✓ Offering enhanced customer support - We are keen to support our customers in new ways and via innovative channels, as part of this we would like to explore remote video customer services for our customers and/or other solutions to assist customers at un-staffed locations or assisting Southeastern in providing 'first to last' customer support.

✓ Consistency and seamless contacts - access to information, on the same channel and given the same answers.

D. Key information

o We have developed our own, bespoke CRM - Javelin, and we require this to be utilised by any customer services partner. Javelin is based on a Service Now structure. Appendix 2 outlines this system in more detail.

o We require contact centre 'core hours' of between 07:00-22:00. An out of hours service would be preferential.

o We have an in-house team that manages Twitter interactions (using Clarabridge Engage). We would like to create the ability for a seamless hand-over from our social media team to our contact centre, avoiding the necessity for a new/separate contact.

o Many of our customer contacts are complex and varied. It is important that any channel introduction or shift does not result in customer frustration or repeat contact.

o We are interested in exploring options for lost property tracking/management.

E. Anticipated procurement process and timescales

Southeastern will run a formal tender process for this requirement via the competitive dialogue procedure. Suppliers will be required to respond to an Expression of Interest ("EOI") which is anticipated to be issued via the Find A Tender service. This will run in parralell with market engagement sessions during May and June 2021.

Depending on the volume of interest generated, a pre-qualification phase may be required in/around July 2021. If required, this will be evaluated using a published scoring methodology (to be provided on or before invitation) and a tender shortlist created from the highest scoring, eligible participants.

This is anticipated to then lead to a tender phase between August and December 2021, with contracts being awarded before the end of the calendar year. Tenders will be evaluated against how suitably Southeastern's objectives have been met (or exceeded) by a bidder's response, allowing for flexibility in approach to be considered.

A handover and mobilisation period has been allowed for between early Ja…