Introducing Tom Joyner
I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself as the new Managing Director of CrossCountry. As many of you now know, Andy Cooper decided to retire at the end of May, after 39 years’ service to Britain’s railways, and I have accepted the opportunity to take up the reins of Arriva’s most diverse rail franchise.
Like Andy, I too am a career railwayman, having worked in many parts of the industry including customer service and operations. I spent some time at Network Rail, was Passenger Services Director for London Midland and latterly Managing Director for Arriva Trains Wales. Recently I led and developed the new Customer Excellence Strategy for Arriva, and I am looking forward to bringing this approach to CrossCountry.
Perhaps the most important thing my career has taught me is you can only be truly successful if you keep your customers’ interests at the heart of your business. I am a great fan of innovation, always looking for how we can change things in the future to make them better for the people that travel with us.
One of the biggest challenges we face as an industry is regaining the trust of our customers. While 2018 was a turbulent year for the railways, many of the problems that surfaced were structurally based and the concerted efforts of everyone over the last 12 months have seen these turning around. However, we now need to show our customers that they can again trust what we say and that we can and will deliver what we’ve promised.
I thought a recent report by Transport Focus really captured what we need to deliver to achieve this. Building trust is a balance of:
- “Doing what is supposed to be done – by getting people where they want to go, safely, at the time they expect to get there”
- “Showing care for customers – demonstrating a human sense of treating people well and fairly”
- “Being seen to have ethics and principles – being a ‘good’ company that has a strong moral compass”
These principles will be at the forefront of how I and my team will approach managing the CrossCountry franchise and serving our customers.
And finally, I wanted to say a word about how I plan to engage with our many stakeholders across England, Scotland and Wales.
I will be as transparent as possible with you all, keeping you updated through this newsletter and other means about what we are doing. Over the coming months, I will be out and about learning more about our business, and during this time I hope to meet many of you. While I can’t promise to meet everyone, I would still like to hear your thoughts and aspirations about CrossCountry, both now and in the future. Do feel free to drop me a line to the email address on the back page of In Focus and we will get back to you. And if you use Twitter then do follow me at @TomJoynerXC.
Read the rest of In Focus Issue 33 here.
