St Pancras washroom facility improvements

Research Problem

The washroom facilities at St Pancras are free to use, unlike washrooms at many other train stations in London. Consequently, and as a result of the 50m+ yearly station footfall, the facilities are heavily used, leading to defects and queues forming. HS1 wished to trial having an additional member of staff working at the washrooms to manage queues and undertake additional cleaning duties, to assess the impact this has on user satisfaction.

Approach

Interviewers worked at the washrooms every day for a week, and then again every day three weeks later when the new member of staff was in place. The interviewers asked respondents a short survey about their experience using the facilities, and also recorded some verbatim feedback on the one thing users would improve. In addition, every hour, interviewers counted the number of washrooms that were out of order.

Outcomes

Results showed an uplift in scores of performance in all areas, in particular, cleanliness. Once the additional staff member was in place verbatims also tended to relate to more trivial matters and focused less on the long queue times. Some issues were evident around facilities being out of order which still needs to be resolved.

The research helped HS1 to understand which touchpoints within the journey had the greatest impact on overall customer satisfaction, and which areas to prioritise in terms of investing in improvement. It had a direct influence on the overall customer improvement strategy that was set out within the business