"I got the best joke in the world in my inbox this morning." SNCF customers received an email from the railway company on Friday morning, announcing that its SNCF Connect app had been voted "customer service of the year 2024" in the "booking platform" category. This news caused many Internet users to react, who competed with each other in humor to comment on this distinction.

In a press release published on its website, SNCF Connect did not hide its delight at having won this award. "We are very honored to receive this label, which rewards the daily commitment of our teams in supporting our users at all stages of their journey. Thank you to our 150 advisors for their involvement and to our customers for their support! (...) Beyond providing concrete solutions to our customers, our role is also to listen and gather their ideas in order to continue to improve our services," the company wrote.

And the best joke of the year goes to... #sncfconnect pic.twitter.com/12I7MZ11cq

— Fred 🌈 (@fseb5193) November 17, 2023

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"Best November Fool's joke!"

That was all it took to provoke a reaction from many Internet users, who had a field day saying what they thought of "this vast joke". "And the best joke of the year goes to... SNCF Connect," reads a tweet (X). "I got the best joke in the world this morning in my inbox. So can the customer service of the year 2024 refund me my 19 euros in cancellation fees? or "Best November Fool's joke! Try to be a transportation service and customer service already in 2023 before aiming for the future @SNCFConnect," some netizens wrote.

Others preferred to recall the numerous complaints lodged with the railway company's customer service, which went unanswered. The SNCF Connect app has been regularly singled out by users since it was set up in early 2022 for numerous malfunctions. "What nerve it takes to send such an email knowing that the SNCF takes more than 3 months to respond to your complaint!" wrote one user.

'Mystery shoppers'

Following these numerous reactions, the SNCF Connect account responded to a user to justify the awarding of this prize: "205 tests were carried out by mystery shoppers with regard to 15 criteria, such as: accessibility, personalisation and quality of the response."

To give you a little more explanation about this label, 205 tests were carried out by mystery shoppers with regard to 15 criteria, such as: accessibility, personalization and quality of response. We hope this explanation brings you a little more clarity.

— SNCF Connect (@SNCFConnect) November 17, 2023

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The body responsible for the label has also explained on its website that this award, "awarded by sector of activity", is based on several criteria: "calls, e-mails, searches for information on the Internet, contacts via social networks made and chat conversations in real situations reflect the daily requests you can make to companies".

  • SNCF
  • Transport
  • Mobile app
  • Reward
  • Social media
  • Humor
  • Internet users
  • By the Web