Revenue protection: GTR’s crackdown on fare evasion
As TOCs continue to build back farebox revenue, GTR’s Andy Leister discusses the role of stemming losses.
Andy LeisterHead of On Board and Rail Enforcement, GTR
Earlier this year, Horizon interviewed Jenny Saunders, GTR’s Customer Services Director. We were keen to explore how TOCs can raise the bar on customer experience and, in doing so, boost revenue. She shared many ‘golden nuggets’. It’s no wonder her interview was a hit.
When the opportunity arose to dig into other aspects of customer experience with Andy Leister, GTR’s Head of On Board and Rail Enforcement, how could we refuse? We talked revenue protection, safety on the network, and empowering the front line—all of which, he says, elevate the customer experience and drive up farebox revenue.
Andy, let’s start with a bit about you. What does your role as Head of On Board and Rail Enforcement at GTR entail?
My role is made up of three parts. One is to look at the Southern on-board supervisor and conductor proposition, which brings together customer service and revenue protection. The second is revenue protection. I’ve a team of revenue protection officers that roam the network in a targeted way. The third is rail enforcement, which involves working with the British Transport Police (BTP) to deal with such things as antisocial behaviour.
Has revenue protection become more important post-COVID?
Most definitely! There’s a renewed focus on protecting revenue. It’s only fair that everybody pays the fare. During COVID, there was a drop in ticket purchases and a spike in fare evasion. There are about 750 people in my team, and all of them do some sort of revenue protection activity.
You’ve long had customer-centred roles in rail. Can you elaborate on the changes you’ve seen in customer travel patterns and behaviours since 2020?
I’ve worked in stations for most of my 30-year rail career, most recently as Head of Stations for Southern. During the pandemic, I became Head of On Board. Since then, my role has evolved and now has a larger revenue protection focus.
Passenger behaviour has changed significantly since 2020. As Jenny mentioned in her interview, we’re seeing a gradual return in passenger numbers, with leisure travel outpacing commuter. We’re not yet back to pre-pandemic numbers, but we still see around 5 million journeys a week.
We’ve noticed that passengers have higher expectations for the travel experience and for customer service—something Jenny also mentioned.
A rise in fare evasion and antisocial behaviour, which are often interconnected, are among the more disquieting behaviour shifts we’ve seen. So, we need to combat that. We’re doing our best to rise to the challenges.
What are you doing to rise to those challenges?
We work closely with the BTP at all levels, from frontline deployment through to senior leadership, to tackle antisocial behaviour. We’ve seen an increase in vulnerable people on the network. A major part of our rail enforcement work is to look out for the vulnerable and to create a safe environment. Sadly, violence against customers and staff is a risk, too, though I’m pleased to say incidents are rare.
We’ve also grown our team, having employed travel safe officers in addition to our reinforcement officer team. Plus, we’ve contracted a third-party security company at key locations, as informed by data. We’re looking at hotspot locations for antisocial behaviour and crime and deploying travel safe officers to work alongside their own permanent resource to make sure our customers and staff are safe.
In this competitive market, where TOCs are even competing with homeworking, can improving the customer experience really boost rail travel? Is it that straightforward?
There is absolutely a correlation there. Our customers expect our stations and trains to be clean. They expect our colleagues to give good customer service. They expect our service to be reliable. When we get that right,we attract more people. Consider leisure travel, where we’re seeing the most growth—a lot of passengers are choosing us over cars and buses.
Have you any examples of strategies you’ve employed, or initiatives you’ve rolled out, to enhance the customer experience and, in so doing, grown farebox revenue?
A key focus for us is optimising yield, drawing ancillary revenue, and making sure that we provide excellent customer service. We’ve run different initiatives, including flash sales on tickets and weekly capping on season tickets. We’re leveraging the leisure market. We’re responding to customer needs in our timetable propositions, and in ticketing and journey options. That’s just a few examples. If we get this stuff right, which we are, and continually improve, then our customer numbers will increase. And they are increasing.
Do revenue protection, customer experience, and profit go hand in hand?
Reducing fare evasion is important to us. It protects our revenue, aids the overall customer experience, and helps combat antisocial behaviour.
We have a robust revenue protection plan. In part, it’s about getting the end-to-end customer journey right: every customer buying the correct ticket through to every ticket being checked as part of customer experience and to protect revenue.
But our strategy goes beyond that. We optimise technology and insights to protect revenue and detect fraud. We ensure that customers buy before they board and that they expect consequences if they don’t. And we set clear roles, responsibilities, and expectations across GTR, making sure all staff understand that they have a role to play in protecting revenue.
How are you resourcing your revenue protection activities in this economically challenging climate?
We’re trying to achieve a lot. We’ve allocated resource to this work intelligently. For example, we’ve recruited a revenue protection analyst to maximise data and turn it into actionable information that can support our deployment. We’ve created a revenue support team, comprising existing staff, to disrupt fare-evading activities. We’ve released a revenue protection guidebook for staff, as well as a fare evasion app. We’re being innovative, and in the absence of a host of additional resource, maximising the resource we’ve got.
As rail continues to regain its strength, what advice would you want our CEO and MD readers to give to your counterparts across the industry?
Good customer experience should be at the heart of everything we do. To deliver that, we must value and empower our colleagues. If they’re proud about their job, they’ll likely go the extra mile. Even something as simple a new name badge that includes ‘revenue protection officer’ makes a difference.
Agility and innovation, amid customers’ ever-changing needs and expectations, are crucial, too. I tell my team: ‘If we always do what we’ve always done, we’ll always get what we’ve always got—and that’s not acceptable.’ We should strive for continuous improvement.
I also recommend sharing best practice within your TOC and across the industry. We have good partnerships with neighbouring TOCs, but there’s more we can do to share trends and themes with the wider industry.
And above all, get the basics right, and do them brilliantly. It’s rarely about reinventing the wheel. If we do this, our customers will know what to expect when they travel with us.
For more on how to enhance customer experience and grow revenue, read our interview with GTR’s Customer Services Director, Jenny Saunders.
Visit page
