Case Study
Our longstanding relationship with CalMac began back in 1997 when our Managing Director was travelling to visit a hotel client on the Isle of Mull. Having sailed over with CalMac, a speculative letter was written to the then commercial director and the rest is history.
Established in 1851, the company is the largest operator of passenger vessels flying the Red Ensign, with 31 vessels currently serving 24 routes to and from the islands off the West Coast of Scotland and in the Clyde estuary. Regularly carrying in excess of 5 million passengers and 1 million vehicles annually, CalMac has a proud history of service to the communities and islands and it is no exaggeration to say that the whole fabric of island life is dependent on the services provided by the company.
It goes without saying, that with CalMac playing such a vital part as a lifeline to the island communities and as a key player in the visitor experience to the beautiful West Coast of Scotland, and thus the tourism economy, customer service has to be at the forefront of everything they do.
We are proud to play our own part in CalMac's philosophy of listening to their passengers, and continually developing and striving to deliver first class service. Our mystery passengers regularly travel on every single route on the network from the 3 hours and 20 minutes Oban - Tiree journey, to the 5 minute Colintraive - Rhubodach crossing; and from travelling on the MV Caledonian Isles with a capacity of 1000 passengers and 110 cars serving the Isle of Arran, to the MV Eigg with a capacity of 75 passengers and 5 cars serving the Isle of Lismore.
Armed with a check list of over 200 standards, they measure everything from a telephone enquiry and booking through to the arrival at a ticket office and the terminal buildings; and onboard from their food, beverage and retail operations through to disembarkation.
In keeping with our philosophy that customers define service quality, we go out of our way to recruit real customers as mystery passengers, providing a mix of local people (from the mainland and islanders) and tourists visiting the region, with the percentage mix matching that of CalMac's real market. In an effort to maintain high standards for all their customers, CalMac regularly task us with special scenarios, for example including passengers with pets, people driving specific vehicle types being amongst the many customers they have with a variety of special needs.
Our reports provide detailed and constructive feedback on how the service received by our mystery passengers matches up to both the standards set by CalMac and the customers' expectations.
We also helped design their Customer Feedback Forms, which we analyse and report on on a monthly basis alongside our summary Mystery Passenger programme reports. In addition we have also carried out customer opinion surveys from island communities including Mull, Bute and Lewis, not only onboard CalMac vessels, but also interviewing people in the high street, local businesses and special interest groups.
CalMac acts on the results with great scrutiny, targeting training programmes towards areas they can develop and improve on, and areas highlighted as important by their passengers. As a result CalMac's scores continue to rise. Standards in the Mystery Passenger programme are reviewed, not too frequently to damage any benchmarking or trend analysis, but frequently enough to ensure they reflect a developing market place and that they continue to set the highest standards for the company and their staff to aim towards achieving.