Sorry seems to be the hardest word, according to a famous Elton John song.
But Sir Elton may have cause to think again if he glances at Scotrail’s online interaction with customers – with the organisation’s frazzled social media team apologising to disgruntled parties at an alarming rate in recent weeks.
Research carried out by the Press and Journal has revealed that, since the start of the year, 24% of all of ScotRail’s posts on social media website Twitter have contained the words “sorry”, “apologies”, or “apologise”.
The trend peaked last Thursday, with 34.5% of their responses to customers being apologies – which averages out as one every 15 minutes.
Nearly 28% of the messages were apologies on Monday January 14, and almost 30% on Wednesday January 9.
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Yesterday, as north-east commuters fumed online about the latest disruption to their travel plans, the Scotrail Twitter account was awash with apologies to customers in every corner of the country.
Staff said sorry to one man complaining about a broken down train near Edinburgh, to another who was unhappy about a faulty toilet on a train to Inverness and said they were “very sorry” to a man who was late for work after a Helensburgh service was cancelled.
