Customer service and social media interaction

Service rating of 7.3

In 2025, our customers rated our customer service 7.3 out of 10. This year was dominated by the impact of NS staff strikes. From June, we proactively deployed additional capacity and intensively trained our staff to handle the additional customer requests. Despite the capacity required for the extra work due to the strikes, we were easily accessible to our customers on all channels in 2025.

Withdrawal from X

NS stopped offering travel information and customer service on the social media platform X with effect from 1 June. Fewer and fewer passengers were using X to ask NS questions. The chat function on NS.nl is far better suited to this purpose. In addition, the work on X had become much less pleasant for our customer service staff in recent years due to the hardened tone on the platform.

Refunds in the event of delays and compensation

In 2025, NS refunded passengers when delays occurred and reimbursed the costs of alternative transport, taxi fares and hotel accommodation:

The year 2025 saw an increase in the number of refunds issued for delays and compensation sums awarded. The increase in refunds for delays was due to strikes and a number of disruptions that had a major impact on passengers at the end of the year. The rise in compensation sums awarded was due to the June strikes, which resulted in nearly 190,000 claims for compensation for alternative transport costs. Of these, over 133,000 claims were approved to the sum of €2.8 million.

NS introduced special regulations in 2014 whereby passengers can claim the cost of alternative transport or the cost of their train ticket in the event of a strike. These are fairly exceptional regulations as they differ from other regulations at NS and the strike regulations applied by other carriers. The regulations also date from a time when passengers were less flexible in their travel behaviour.

After finalising all applications from the summer 2025 strike, NS plans to review the implementation of the regulations. NS feels it is important for it to continue to contribute towards passengers’ costs if their train journey cannot go ahead due to a strike.