Does Irish Rail Management read Boards?

Drimnagh Road

The company I work for pays a fee to an external company to plough through newspapers, internet etc on a daily basis and anything at all that features the name of the company or article is brought to the attention of the press office. I assume they in turn check it's accuracy and defend articles where appropriate. Luckilly, we don't be in the news that much.

I think this is standard in most large organisations, public or private.

With all the (rightfully so) bashing of Irish Rail, do Corporate Communications do the same for Irish Rail? Are they aware of us? If we had a member with the user name Barry Kenny coming on-line to defend and respond to each individual post, he'd be a very busy man.

Colm R

Hang on a second now

Someone types the name of a company into Google.

And gets paid for this!!

bk

I'm sure they do.

I know for a fact that management of various ISP's and Telecom companies like Eircom, UPC and Vodafone did so for years and eventually actually paid to set up their own support forums here on boards.

Maybe some day Irish Rail, DB, BE will do the same and set up their own forums here on boards. BE certainly seem to be embracing social media.

Colm R

bk wrote: »

I'm sure they do.

I know for a fact that management of various ISP's and Telecom companies like Eircom, UPC and Vodafone did so for years and eventually actually paid to set up their own support forums here on boards.

Maybe some day Irish Rail, DB, BE will do the same and set up their own forums here on boards. BE certainly seem to be embracing social media.

Thats actually not a bad idea. I guess its in the business interest of companies in a competitive market to do so.

Losty Dublin

Were they were to have a member to post replies on here, Drimnagh, most railway posts on here would be ignored as they are either heritage based, OTT, irrelevant rants or posts from those with vested interests in topics. If topics were kept to the bread and butter stuff the general commuter asks then yes it would be worthwhile but a visit to the Irish Rail FB page shows that there are those who pull it OT with the usual questions about trains to Donegal et al.

Drimnagh Road

A quick look at that Facebook site reveals a lot of disgruntled commuters.

Judgement Day

Unless things have changed radically since the 1980s I'd be quite sure they monitor Boards, IRN, RUI etc., as they used to have a weekly management newsletter Eolas (?) which featured every single press cutting - nationwide - from the previous week. I used to have a load of them but they long since went into the recycling. The sad thing is though, despite all the monitoring they never respond to all the criticism in any meaningful way.

Losty Dublin

Drimnagh Road wrote: »

A quick look at that Facebook site reveals a lot of disgruntled commuters.

I was talking about those who'd deflect from the genuine topics that could be addressed; most punters don't care about lifting points in wherever or colour schemes or the type of milk in their tea which does go on here

foggy_lad

Judgement Day wrote: »

Unless things have changed radically since the 1980s I'd be quite sure they monitor Boards, IRN, RUI etc., as they used to have a weekly management newsletter Eolas (?) which featured every single press cutting - nationwide - from the previous week. I used to have a load of them but they long since went into the recycling. The sad thing is though, despite all the monitoring they never respond to all the criticism in any meaningful way.

Maybe there was no way to respond without opening a can of worms or without making IE/CIE look bad?

ongarboy

Colm R wrote: »

Hang on a second now

Someone types the name of a company into Google.

And gets paid for this!!

lol, that was my job (one of my duties anyway) when I worked for a year in Sydney back in the 90s. As it was generally pre internet era, I spent most of my mornings reading the papers/magazines...oh yeah, and look for articles of relevence....!!

I notice the Consumer forum in Boards has subforums for the likes of Currys etc whereby a staff member responds to customer issues/complaints/concerns or just general queries posted there etc. I think the public would appreciate IR if they embraced something like that. You mighn't always be happy with the responses you got but at least you felt like you weren't being ignored.

SandyfordGuy

The DB Facebook site doesn't really work from what I've seen, anyone with the slightest negativity is always told to email them, which kind of defeats the purpose of being on a social network. I feel it's being run by their PR team at times who just want to keep anything negative off there. To be fair Bus Eireann are better in this regard and tend to be far more open publicly.

LXFlyer

Well DB appear to have a standard customer complaints system similar to many companies which I would say is fair enough - that way the complaint gets logged into a database and can be collated together easily.

Doing it via the facebook page negates that system.

bk

When the ISPs and telcos first joined boards they had similar concerns.

Hell we are talking about Eircom here, probably the most hated company on boards. CIE doesn't hold a candle to how hated they are here.

Yet they didn't receive the abuse that they expected when they launched their own forum. Because boards is well run and the mods wouldn't stand for any abuse. Their forums actually turned out very successful.

Of course they don't answer any of the really interesting questions we have, they just say things like "thanks for the feedback, we will pass it on to the relevant team for consideration".

In fairness some companies like o2, after months of saying this actually did make product changes based on how pissed off people were about some recent product changes they made.

Judgement Day

That's just what we need, a CIE Forum where Barry Kenny and his apologists on Boards can hold sway with the Mods slapping down anything vaguely critical. :rolleyes:

bk

Judgement Day wrote: »

That's just what we need, a CIE Forum where Barry Kenny and his apologists on Boards can hold sway with the Mods slapping down anything vaguely critical. :rolleyes:

On the Telecoms/ISP forums critical posts are completely allowed. Just within the normal boards rules (no cursing, attack the post, not the poster, etc.). Doesn't mean the reps will necessarily respond or if they do, the response is anything useful.

However it has proven a very positive experience for all over on the telecoms/isp forums.

Flukey

Do the Irish Rail Management read Boards? Of course they do. Not only that, they ignore nearly everything we say. After all, why should they be any different to any of the other transport companies?

mickydoomsux

Flukey wrote: »

Do the Irish Rail Management read Boards? Of course they do. Not only that, they ignore nearly everything we say. After all, why should they be any different to any of the other transport companies?

And you know this how?

MOH

Well they seem to ignore most complaint letters addressed to them, so it's logical to assume they'd ignore anything on Boards.

Flukey

mickydoomsux wrote: »

And you know this how?

From the state of our public transport system.

Victor

Several Irish Rail, RPA and Veolia managers have said they here.

Perhaps you guys should raise the level of debate sometimes. :pac:

Judgement Day

Victor wrote: »

Several Irish Rail, RPA and Veolia managers have said they here.

Perhaps you guys should raise the level of debate sometimes. :pac:

I think that foggy lad is actually Barry Kenny on here as an agent provocateur.

Losty Dublin

Judgement Day wrote: »

I think that foggy lad is actually Barry Kenny on here as an agent provocateur.

And you Black Michael

Mark200

Colm R wrote: »

Hang on a second now

Someone types the name of a company into Google.

And gets paid for this!!

In fairness there are plenty of publications that do not have an online searchable version.

I'd assume that Irish Rail do read this forum. Even if not strictly part of their job, I'd be surprised if they didn't even have a browse every so often.

n97 mini

Flukey wrote: »

Do the Irish Rail Management read Boards? Of course they do. Not only that, they ignore nearly everything we say.

And who could blame them... Boards.ie is infamous for bad/wrong advice!

Judgement Day

n97 mini wrote: »

And who could blame them... Boards.ie is infamous for bad/wrong advice!

Speak for yourself.

Armada

Personally I feel any business dealing with the public should embrace open and frank discussion. If people are genuine then you will have both negative and positive comments and the public will see what the company are doing to fix any issues etc.