Head of Product at Passenger Greg Hepworth (pictured) has said customer experience and ‘excitement features’ such as capping will attract customers back onto buses.
It comes after a statement that contactless payments are now ‘the status quo’ on bus travel. While Mr Hepworth claims that operators prefer to be paid using contactless and that passengers would be frustrated without it, the system “doesn’t add anything special” and even “anonymises the passenger” with the differentiator being customer experience.
“To attract customers back onto buses, we need to enhance their customer experience,” he says. “To differentiate we need to increase customer satisfaction by offering ‘excitement’ features, which add much more value to the customer experience than the effort to deliver them.”
That main excitement feature is capping, which Mr Hepworth says will soon become a “must-have” feature. Another will be multi-operator experiences, such as the ability to travel on various operators or modes using an existing card and system.
“At Passenger, a great customer experience is what drives everything we do,” he adds. “The new user tools in our recently launched Contactless Journeys module give customers a real-time view into the journeys they’ve made using contactless, proactively and across operators.
“As this is a long-term strategy for us, we keep looking at this experience to see how we can improve it. The capability works in real-time and updates as the passenger travels on the network. It will be proactive – we can see these events as they happen which allows us to connect directly with the passenger in exciting ways.
“We will give the passenger visibility into their journeys and charges, where relationships allow – across operators and even modes. All of this combines to provide trust and transparency in the bus networks which will result in increased patronage.”
Two areas of concern for users, according to Passenger, are the ability to view charges in real time and when they have been capped. Passenger is putting those “at the centre of their travel” and is working with Littlepay to expose users’ journeys to them, in “tools they are familiar with”.
All of this works to build a “richer passenger experience”. Passenger describes personalisation as being the future of travel. “With personalisation, we can drive bridges and start building habits – a virtuous circle,” adds Mr Hepworth. “Our vision is to give users a view of all travel activity, regardless of journey or payment method. This requires more integration between systems, which is not easy, but we can do it.
“In itself, Contactless Journeys provides a huge amount of value to the passenger and operator, to increase patronage. But wouldn’t it be nice if all travel could follow this model? What if it was based on their entire travel history rather than because someone paid in a certain way? As the National Bus Strategy and Bus Service Improvement Plans start combining some of these experiences, we’re in the unique position of being able to pull that all together and present a truly compelling customer experience where people just travel.”
