Managing customer complaints and learning from past experiences

Punctuality/reliability

409

c2c has seen a reduction in customer complaints relating to punctuality and reliability (down from 544 in 2024/25). In 2025/26, the largest subcategory was “Alleged Early Departure” (16%), followed by “Repeated Poor Performance” (14%) and “Delayed on a Number of Occasions” (11%).

These trends largely align with periods impacted by dry clay embankments across the route, where speed restrictions and an amended timetable were implemented to maintain safe operations. The amended timetable, introduced in August 2025, increased journey times to accommodate lower speeds and, in some cases, resulted in earlier departures or reduced stopping patterns. Engineering works accounted for a further 9% of complaints; while these can cause short-term disruption, they remain essential to maintaining and improving the reliability of our ageing infrastructure over the longer term.

We continue to take a structured approach to improvement, inputting customer feedback into “lessons learned” working groups with colleagues from across the business to identify opportunities and recognise successful interventions. This is complemented by close collaboration with Network Rail to ensure planning guidelines remain accurate and reflective of current network conditions, reducing the risk of delays during normal operations. We are also working with Network Rail’s engineering access teams to better balance the delivery of essential infrastructure works with minimising disruption to customers.

Despite a 1.4% reduction in T-3 performance compared with 2024/25, c2c remains the leading train operator in the industry for service performance. Our approach to measuring cancellations has also been strengthened, with assessment now covering all stations across the route.

Fleet performance has remained strong throughout 2025/26, supported by targeted maintenance and enhanced weather resilience measures, including those delivered through the Class 357 repaint and refresh programme. In parallel, continued driver recruitment and training has improved operational resilience and reduced driver-related cancellations.

Looking ahead to 2026/27, our focus will be on strengthening resilience and addressing key risk areas. This includes enhanced contingency planning for future dry weather and clay embankment events, targeted signalling reliability improvements (particularly between Fenchurch Street–West Ham and Westcliff–Southend Central), and increasing operational flexibility through infrastructure works such as platform strengthening at Limehouse to support 12-car operations. We will also continue driver recruitment and training, alongside targeted fleet maintenance and ongoing weather resilience improvements to both the Class 357 and Class 720 fleets, supported by a limited number of targeted timetable enhancements.

Attitude and Helpfulness of the staff at the station

304

Staff complaints have seen an increase in 25/26. Each complaint is assessed and investigated on a case-by-case basis working closely with our Station Management teams. To reduce staff complaints the following training is provided to station staff:

We are continuing to develop and will shortly release the Stations Live App, which will help our frontline teams stay up to date with information, particularly out of hours. We also have the Customer Room coming out soon, which will help to streamline information live for frontline teams to better assist customers at the station, which will decrease complaints in the “Helpfulness of the staff at the station” category.

In the coming year, we are working with the Learning and Development team to create bespoke training for Customer Delivery Managers in complaint response to increase complaints handling satisfaction.

Ticket Buying facilities - online

259

There has been an increase in complaints driven by a series of bugs and outages on the c2c App in H2 of 25/26, affecting ticket download to wallets, address capture in payment flow and sporadic duplicate transactions.

A major ongoing project by our online TIS supplier is to migrate our ticket retail applications over to a containerized architecture, expected to deploy during P2 26/27. This has been a cause of some of the resolution slowness; however, it will provide benefits into 26/27 on improved service delivery and faster / simpler future releases, expected to drive down future complaints.

Our Digital and Customer Relations teams work closely together to identify trends and resolve any incidents from complaints to prevent recurrence and reduce complaint volumes and impact to customers. We are also working with the supply chain to improve the speed of resolution through improving SLA guardrails & incentivise a substantially more robust service to our customers.

Over 25/26 our online retail supply chain has also migrated to a new incident management process, requiring the update of a number of procedures, we are expecting this to materialize benefits in 26/27.

Delay Repay

160

Complaints relating to Delay Repay claims are a common reason for customer contact related to disruption. Compared to the previous year, complaints about Delay Repay claims have decreased by 22%. We have introduced a new Refund and Compensation page on our website to better customer understanding of the claim process. This was published at the end on 24/25 but has had an impact for the 25/26 Rail year.

All Delay Repay claim complaints are assessed on a case-by-case basis with the claims being re-reviewed for any customer experience improvements. Any technical issues with our Delay Repay platform are escalated and resolved with suppliers as a priority.

Ticket buying facilities - other

138

There has been an Increase in complaints due to the rollout of Contactless Pay as You Go for the whole c2c network in Project Oval:

The largest single incident involved overcharging of customers travelling to Fenchurch Street resulted in collaboration with TfL to develop an automatic refund process for affected passengers and improvements to the contactless fare setting process freeing time for increased quality control during fare setting periods. With the expansion of Oval onto GA routes, we have increased collaboration with GA to help ensure any issues are resolved with some missing fares identified and corrected before complaints were received.

Customer comments are valuable in helping to identify minor product and pricing errors/anomalies/inconsistencies which are corrected wherever possible.

Smartcards

132

We have seen a reduction in Smartcard-related complaints driven by 4 areas:

Going forward – we are working with RDG’s smart ticketing services team to drive service level improvements from the vendor responsible for the national smartcard services to reduce issues and therefore complaints further.

Lack of accessible facilities at station

We have taken a structured and proactive approach to addressing complaints regarding the lack of accessible facilities across the c2c network, with a clear focus on delivering tangible improvements for customers. As set out in Key Highlights - Accessibility Roadmap, we have strengthened the reliability and accountability of Passenger Assistance through clearer ownership and enhanced processes, alongside the rollout of digital tools such as GoodMaps for step free navigation and InterpretersLive! to provide on demand British Sign Language support. We have also improved the accuracy and availability of lift status information across all customer channels, helping customers to plan their journeys with confidence. At a station level, we are delivering significant accessibility upgrades through the Access for All programme, including new lifts and step free routes, alongside targeted minor works such as improved signage, to address practical barriers identified through audits and customer feedback. These improvements are underpinned by refreshed disability awareness training for staff and stronger contractor oversight, ensuring that accessibility is consistently delivered and that concerns raised through complaints are actively addressed and used to drive continuous improvement.

We are working in partnership with Network Rail to deliver a targeted improvement plan to enhance lift availability across c2c stations. This includes prioritising the resolution of lift faults through strengthened service level agreements (SLAs) to reduce downtime and improve reliability for customers. A key focus of this work has been addressing recurring issues at Barking, which has generated the highest volume of accessibility-related complaints.

Assistance not provided

We have implemented a series of targeted improvements to address customer complaints relating to failed or missed Passenger Assistance and to strengthen the reliability of delivery across the c2c network. Ensuring our frontline colleagues have clear information on customer needs and journey details, which supports better preparation and accountability for delivering assistance. This has been complemented by strengthened communication and handover processes between origin and destination stations, ensuring the call ahead process is followed, staff are in place ahead of customer arrival and that ownership of each assist is clearly understood. Additionally, we have standardised some assistance processes, enhanced monitoring of performance trends, and embedded continuous improvement through the review of all failures and sharing of learning across teams. These measures are supported by stronger governance, training, and clear escalation routes, delivering more reliable and consistent assistance while reducing the risk of missed or delayed support for customers