UP3 - Southeastern: Automating Delay Repay with ServiceNow

Southeastern: Automating Delay Repay with ServiceNow

Southeastern Railway uses ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM) as its central CRM. Through a long-term partnership, UP3 provides ongoing ServiceNow Managed Services, helping to improve digital operations and address a historically manual and inefficient Delay Repay process.

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About Southeastern

Southeastern Railway operates one of the busiest networks in the country, running over 1,700 trains a day across the South East of England, carrying 500,000+ daily passengers.

With so many daily customers, the Customer Relations team is an essential service to support people before, during, and after their train journeys. All customer queries, complaints and praise come through this team, which consists of 72 staff in contact centre roles and 16 at head office. 

Industry:

Transport

Company size:

4,000+

Location:

United Kingdom

UP3 services:

ServiceNow Managed Service, ServiceNow Support Services

ServiceNow products:

ServiceNow CSM Pro Plus, ServiceNow ITSM Pro, Virtual Agent, Now Assist for CSM

Outcomes:

  • Automation: Approximately 70% of Delay Repay claims are now fully automated end-to-end.
  • Compliance: Southeastern consistently meets all ORR delay repay standards across all claim types.
  • Customer Experience: Streamlined submission and proactive notifications improved trust and engagement.
  • Efficiency: Reduced manual workload, faster resolutions, and consistent, auditable processes.

Automate Delay Repay from claim to payment with our Rail Case Management App

Read the data sheet

The challenge

Historically Southeastern's Delay Repay process was highly manual with staff having to validate every ticket and journey manually across multiple disconnected systems. This created lots of inefficiencies, long processing times and a poor customer experience.

Key challenges

  • Manual validation of claims and ticket data across several legacy systems.
  • High administrative effort with heavy reliance on staff to meet required response times.
  • Compliance with strict Office of Rail and Road (ORR) regulations on compensation processing.
  • Lack of proactive customer engagement or integration with fraud prevention systems.

"Once we’d set-up UP3’s Delay Repay Case Management App alongside the Rail Fraud App, designed and developed around our specific requirements, we were able to automate 70% of compensation claims without them ever even needing to touch a human being. Customers were being paid out within 24-48 hours!"

David Banham, Customer Relations Operations Manager

The solution

Rail Case Management app, built on ServiceNow

UP3 implemented Rail Case Management, built on ServiceNow, to unify and automate Southeastern’s Delay Repay process and wider case management to include customer feedback, complaints, and assisted and group travel. This app also works in unison with UP3’s Rail Fraud App, enabling rail companies to stop fraud as it happens.

Key features

  • Automated validation: Integrated with multiple external systems - including historic paper ticket and digital ticket systems, Southeastern’s smartcard The Key, and Darwin (the national real-time train running data source)to automatically validate journeys and all ticket types to confirm eligibility for compensation, all in one system
  • Fraud detection: Integrates with UP3’s existing fraud application, built on ServiceNow, to automatically identify impossible or duplicate journeys, ensuring legitimate claims only.
  • Secure payments: Automated bank and PayPal payments directly from the platform using secure integrations, eliminating manual agent processing.
  • Omnichannel engagement: The app integrates with customer portals, webchat and social media, allowing customers to self-serve while giving them access to agents for more complex queries.
  • Proactive “one click” claims: Ability to notify customers automatically when a journey is delayed and pre-populate claims, enhancing fairness and customer trust.
  • Case management & QA: Built-in workflows for complex cases to ensure compensation requests are handled appropriately with SLA tracking, categorisation, and quality assurance checks.
  • Regulatory compliance: Embedded ORR rules, SLA timers, and reporting to ensure all statutory timeframes (e.g., 20 working days to pay a claim) are met.
    Southeastern: Automating Delay Repay with ServiceNow

    The outcome

    Due to their custom Rail Case Management App, built on ServiceNow, Southeastern were able to reap the benefits of:

    • Automation: Approximately 70% of Delay Repay claims are now fully automated end-to-end.
    • Compliance: Southeastern consistently meets all ORR delay repay standards across all claim types.
    • Customer Experience: Streamlined submission and proactive notifications improved trust and engagement.
    • Efficiency: Reduced manual workload, faster resolutions, and consistent, auditable processes.

      UP3 -

      “In 2025 alone, the UP3 Rail Fraud App and Delay Repay Case Management App helped us identify almost 36,000 fraudulent compensation requests, safeguarding revenue and ensuring fairness for genuine passengers."

      Yvonne Quinn, Head of Customer Relations

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