Red Funnel senior leaders connect with Island residents in reinstated Customer Forum

This month (October), Red Funnel hosted a group of Island resident customers at its newly improved Customer Forum. The face-to-face discussion provided the opportunity for customers to connect with Red Funnel’s senior leaders, including CEO Fran Collins and CFO Graham Barnetson, and to raise questions and share feedback directly with the company.

A wide variety of topics were discussed during the full 3-hour session, including ferry service reliability, labour challenges, pricing, support for customers travelling for medical reasons, through to general customer service feedback, the Signature Lounge, the company’s food and beverage offerings, support for disabled passengers and the Red Jet timetable.  

A summary of the session has been posted online, here: http://www.redfunnel.co.uk/CustomerForum

Discussing the Customer Forum, Fran Collins, CEO of Red Funnel, said: “We’re proud to support the Island community and it was a real pleasure to spend time with our customers in this close personal setting, and I’d like to thank them for their time and open, constructive feedback. In addition to specific action items, the session left the team and I really inspired and underscores again that what we do every day really matters.

“The decisions and actions we take on a daily basis involve balancing the needs all the stakeholders we serve, alongside factoring in a number of forces, be they regulatory, political, social or environmental, so it was interesting to share more about how we operate and hear the feedback from our customers. It’s given us more insight into how we need to better communicate the ‘why’ behind what we do.

“Being able to share updates and information in person and maintain a two-way dialogue is one of the best ways of doing this. There’s a lot more we want to share and we want to keep hearing from our customers too.”

Red Funnel will be hosting its next Customer Forum session in February 2023. Customers interested in attending a future Customer Forum, can contact [email protected].

-ENDS-

For further information, please contact [email protected] / 02380 382 970

Notes to editors

About Red Funnel

Red Funnel is the original Isle of Wight ferry company with roots tracing back to 1820. Based in the UK port of Southampton, Red Funnel carries 2.3m passengers and over 800,000 vehicles on its ferry route between the UK port of Southampton and East Cowes and 1.1m passengers between Southampton and West Cowes on its Red Jet Hi-Speed service.

In addition to ferry travel, Red Funnel is the only cross-Solent operator to offer ferry inclusive bonded holiday accommodation, attraction tickets, festival and event tickets and activity packages. Sub-brands include ‘Red Jet’ (the Hi-Speed passenger only ferry service serving West Cowes) and its on board café, ‘ReFuel’.

The Company is a founder member of Visit Isle of Wight Ltd, the Island’s not for profit destination management organisation and Red Funnel sponsors or supports most of the Island’s premier events including the IW Festival, Cowes Week, Rhythm Tree, Wight Proms, and Walk the Wight as well as a range of community and niche interest events. Red Funnel’s Charity of the Year, 2022 is Young Lives vs. Cancer.

For more information, visit www.redfunnel.co.uk.