The Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Luxembourgeois (CFL) is Luxembourg’s railway company. The rail network covers 628 kilometres with 70 stations and stops. More than 25 million passengers are transported annually and around 10,000 lost property items are recorded in the system
Highlights
- Online loss report with standardised item categories and characteristics
- Automatic, language-independent matching of lost and found reports
- Multilingual customer communication
- Automated electronic communication
- Efficiency increase through Lost & Found standard processes
Luxembourg Railways (CFL) opts for the lost property system of the future: Nova Find, Europe’s leading lost property software from RUBICON, succeeds in both: optimising service for passengers and increasing efficiency for CFL staff.
Since March 2020, public transport in Luxembourg is free of charge for citizens and tourists. With this, Luxembourg is sending a clear signal in Europe for the attractiveness of public transport. In the course of this development, the services of the CFL will be offered online. The lost property system will also be completely digitalised.
“We see the introduction of Nova Find as a sustainable investment in the future of lost property. This will enable us to offer our customers an even better service.”
Tom Felix, Tariff Administrator of the Luxembourg Railways
Nova Find public search mask
A simple, barrier-free search mask is available to passengers on the Luxembourg Railway website. The standardised recording of loss reports in predetermined item categories and with special characteristics optimises data quality. This increases the probability of a matching hit when the loss report is compared with the find messages.
“After the loss report is created, Nova Find checks the concurrence with available find messages. The passenger is shown the best possible hits – online and in real time,” that’s how Raimund Höslinger, Sales Manager at RUBICON, explains the sophisticated search technology. “If there is no suitable find report at the time of the loss notification, it will be further compared with subsequent find reports. If there is a suitable hit, the employee of the lost-property office is notified of it automatically.” Nova Find compares notifications regardless of the language in which they were written and recognises both different names for the same item and typos.
Nova Find has a lot of advantages!
„Luxembourg is an international hub. People from all over the world use our means of transport. For this reason, the multilingual nature of the new solution is particularly important to us.“
TOM FELIX, TARIFF MANAGER, LUXEMBOURG RAILWAY
In the Nova Find back office, employees of the central CFL lost-property office manage all found objects. As in the public search mask, individually adapted categories and characteristics are available to describe the item. In particular, the progressive find recording achieves an increase in efficiency in the workflow: The fast pre-recording identifies the found object with a barcode and minimises personnel costs.
In a further step, the find report in the central lost-property office is completed and then automatically compared with the existing loss reports. The owner is immediately notified in the case of a hit. This automatised, 100% digital communication significantly reduces the expenses in the lost-property office of the Luxembourg Railway.
The Nova Find back office accompanies a found item throughout the entire life cycle, even across several locations. This is supported by extensive warehouse management as well as the planned standard processes, such as the transfer of found objects to authorities. The seamless documentation of the entire process guarantees the traceability of all action steps taken.
Challenges Faced on Implementation
The new solution for lost-property offices was implemented within just 3 months. The importance of digitisation was once again demonstrated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the pandemic, online training was held for the lost-property office staff in order to make it easier for them to get started with the new software. At the beginning of June 2020, the new lost-property system finally became productive for the Luxembourg Railway.
Nova Find is hosted in RUBICON’s ISO 27001-certified data centre. This way, Luxembourg Railway can rely on the fact that its lost-property office software and data is protected from external access and is available at all times.
Mobile Outlook
In order to be able to help their customers even faster in the event of a loss, the mobile staff of the CFL will also use the Nova Find app in the future. This means that finds can already be recorded on the train or at the station. This saves valuable time and further improves customer service.
„It will be easier and more efficient for both passengers and CFL staff – a win-win situation thanks to digital lost-property handling.“
Raimund Höslinger, Sales Manager at RUBICON