Online ticket provider TheTrainline has won an industry award for its efforts to improve communication with customers.

The firm carried out an overhaul of its core IT system to provide extra customer-facing functionality and improve corporate services, as the underlying technology on which the business was built in 1999 approached the end of its useful life.

“This is an evolution from where we were, which was a very monolithic setup to a modular, service-oriented architecture which will allow us to be more agile and help us deal with the demands placed on us,” TheTrainline’s development director Rob Parkinson told Computing last year.

Other projects geared at improving service levels include enhancements in multi-channel customer enquiry-handling processes. The company also introduced voice capture for better understanding of issues surrounding booking as well as requirements when purchasing rail tickets online or on the phone.

TheTrainline also rolled out a system provided by RightNow Technologies to build a single view of customer interactions and improve enquiry handling across phone, email, web and chat channels. The tool is also used to gather customer feedback and help the firm in boosting quality of service.

“Everyone was tied financially and emotionally to making our transformation into a customer-centric organisation a success,” said Bill Hopkins, operations director at TheTrainline, after winning the CRM Excellence Award.