You’re at the bus stop, the bus is late. You peer into the distance hoping to see it, but it’s still not there – enter Rygo
Sitting in the new Southampton-based office of Rygo, routeone receives an exclusive preview of its newly-rebranded app.
Formerly Find My Bus, Rygo – a blend of ‘ride’ and ‘go’ – enables passengers to easily identify and follow their bus on the map.
With Rygo, operators can give passengers the opportunity to see exactly where the bus is, or from a more safety-point-of-view, parents whose children catch the bus to and from school can see where the bus is, when it leaves, and when it arrives.
But the app, and Rygo, offer much more than just a simple tracking service, including:
Schedule Adherence: Instantly see whether the bus is running behind schedule allowing you to plan a better journey
Services Updates: Live updates for when a service has to change suddenly due to unexpected circumstances
Timetables: Formatted, simplified timetables designed to fit on mobile devices and tablets
Route Maps: A clean, road-mapped route showing where the bus is scheduled to travel.
Websites can also be designed to work alongside the app. Rygo Web is a website package designed and built for transport operators, but built with passengers in mind, says Director Joel Kidd.
They are based on a template system and allow operators to represent their brand with a professional, modern, good-looking website.
Operators can upload timetables, fare charts and submit service updates which display on their website and push out to the Rygo app with a notification alongside the relevant service. Bus tracking is also integrated into the website.
Passengers can go to an operator's site, check a timetable and/or fares, see the bus' location, and then scan the service QR code in the Rygo app and hand-off tracking to their mobile device.
The rebrand
“We traded under Find My Bus for four years, exploring different ventures and avenues,” says Joel.
“Towards the end of Spring 2018 we commenced a rebrand in order to revitalise the brand, but also to lock in objectives and focus purely on the app and web products the company offers.”
Joel revealed that £25,000 has been spent on the rebrand. This includes a fresh brand from a blank canvas, as well as obtaining the rights to short four-letter rygo.com domain.
The rebrand also includes a 90-second animated video that explains how Rygo’s products benefits operators.
The business has also started to expand with the recruitment of two new sales executives to assist with growth, and have moved into a new office.
At present, Joel says the company has contracts with 25 operators/institutions in the UK.
“As part of an aggressive expansion plan, we expect to have integrated the product with over 100 transport operators by the end of 2019,” he says.
The expansion doesn’t stop in the UK though; Rygo has set up its first international contract at the beginning of the year with Titan Express in Bermuda.
No visits were required, and to get an understanding of how easy it is to be set up, we’re told everything was complete within two weeks.
“We’ve never worked with their tracking devices before, but we established a contractual relationship with the company that manufacturer the tracking machines for this operator in Bermuda and then set up a feed/link to get the vehicle positions. That’s now in the app at the moment – you can track Bermuda buses,” he says.
The primary goal for this customer was to allow parents to see the locations of the buses their children are on, to and from school, as well as allowing schools to track the vehicles.
Joel adds: “We are currently talking to a number of much larger high-profile operators and hope to have some of our biggest deals to date signed by the end of summer.”
Rygo v social media
The way Rygo has been developed offers passengers a selection of operators available in the area (albeit they have signed up to the software), meaning passengers don’t have to search through every bus to find theirs – they can simply just select a specific service and receive all of the information on that particular one instantaneously.
This feature then gives operators the ability to push out service updates – an important aspect to maintaining passenger satisfaction; no one wants to be wondering where their bus is or why it’s late.
Joel says: “It’s the fastest way to get a message out to passengers. You’ve got Twitter and Facebook, which most operators use at the moment – but let’s say you’ve got someone in the control room, and they want to push out an update to all of the A1 passengers because the bus has been cancelled.
“They log into Rygo’s content management system and then they can post an update to the A1 route, send out a notification with it and then only the A1 users will get an update straightaway. It will pop up on their phone that it’s cancelled. Whereas with Twitter, you have to go on and actively check and try and contact the company, but with this you get a direct message instantly.”
How it started
Joel, a freelance web designer and college student at the time, was just 17 when he approached Southampton-based bus operator Velvet asking to redesign its website.
Joel says: “I made them a bespoke website and asked Velvet’s Managing Director Phil Stockley – because it happened to be the bus I was getting to and from college everyday – ‘why wasn’t it possible to see where the buses were?’.”
Adds Joel: “Phil explained the ins-and-outs of the ticket machines and how they’ve got GPS. I was asked to come up with an app or solution that would allow me to pull in third-party information from electronic ticket machines and put it into a system that would work for passengers, so they can see it on their phone.
“When Velvet ceased trading, we went up to TM Travel where Phil was moving to at the time and we set it up there, and they’re still a customer to this day.”
Joel explains the company has branched out from there.
How it works
Passengers can’t simply download the app and track the service they want; it requires an operator to have purchased a licence with Rygo.
Joel explains that pricing for the software is split into tiers to make it more affordable for different sized operations.
Annual fees can be paid monthly to break up the cost, and a discount of 10% is available if an operator is willing to pay annual fees up front.
Working with Rygo is simple and straightforward. An operator shows interest, Joel says he will then go out and give a no-obligation meeting to demonstrate the products. The next stage, if they’re happy with it, will then be – if it’s a bus – to establish communication with the ticket machine manufacturer, for a coach it will be to a sat-nav to gain the positions.
Joel says: “We’ve partnered with TomTom so if, for example, an operator comes to us with no tracking devices at all, we have a setup solution with TomTom that allows us to order in devices very quickly and set them up. Then it normally takes a couple of weeks to get the positions and put them into the app. 99% of the time operators already have devices onboard that we can work with.”
Reap the benefits
Rygo’s offering provides a chance for operators to invest in technology that offers many benefits to the business in the long run.
The app not only shows passengers that the operator is innovative and willing to embrace technology, but it also increases their level of satisfaction as they are not left wondering where their bus is, what time their bus is due, or how much their journey will cost. This will then, in turn, also lessen the amount of complaints and calls to the office.
Great service encourages customers to return, as well as prompting them to spread the word to friends, family and colleagues, which is a great advertising tool and increases footfall.
Furthermore, safety on home-to-school vehicles is at the forefront of every parent and school professional’s mind. The vehicle tracking element of the technology will do nothing but increase the operator’s appeal to schools, thus increasing the ability to win more contracts.
Rygo has already received positive feedback from those that already use it and, other than the licence fee, there’s no additional costs to the operator.
Says Joel: “There is zero additional costs as there is no need for the operator to buy anything extra; we work with everything they already have onboard.”
Interested operators are encouraged to visit Rygo’s new website to find out more, as well as view their new animated explainer video.
