(06 Jan 2020, 12:44 am)OrangeArrow49 The bus will never compete with the car, a taxi or app-based service like Uber. Buses have their place, but are not true competition, and they never will be.
Customer service is poor on Stagecoach and outstanding on GNE in my experience, broadly speaking. However there has been good customer service on Stagecoach and poor customer service on GNE. GNE customer service is good on social media and live chat as far I know. Arriva has a reputation for poor customer service, but I never use Arriva so won't comment too much. Gateshead Central Taxis has terrible customer service and Stanley Travel has outstanding customer service. Customer service is clearly inconsistent within the companies, and the industry. There is work to be done for certain. Buses will never be perfect, and will never be the best way to commute.
And with that sort of attitude, they will never compete.
When you want to attract customers away from someone else, you have to look at what their current provider does right and then build on it. Not only that, but customers sometimes have the best suggestions too, and these shouldn't just be filed away by Customer Services, they should go straight to the top and get looked at by someone who can bring change.
Arriva, with a bit of work, could attract me out of my Audi and onto their X21. To do that, you look at what the car offers, it offers flexibility, convenience, consistency and a set price (diesel) which I can calculate my journey costs with. My car also has comfortable (fabric!) seats, ample legroom and charging points which work consistently.
Arriva, and fellow bus operators can take this and offer something better.
Fares
If I wanted to travel to the Metrocentre, I'd have to pay £10.90, and £20.60 for a family. That would be getting the Arriva bus to Newcastle, and then changing to GNE bus from there. In the car, it would cost me just over a fiver in fuel for a round trip. That £10.90/£20.60 ticket is extortion compared to the car, but if you lower the percentage of profit gained from that sale, then it starts to become more affordable.
Another thing, if someone who lived in Morpeth had to commute to Durham or Sunderland every day, they'd have to get a separate Arriva and Metro/GNE/Network One ticket to complete their journey, not only is this inconvenient, it's complicated for new customers and it's unnecessary.
Something better would be a smartcard, or maybe a contactless PAYG set-up (similar to London) where you hop on a bus or Metro, regardless of the operator and it'll charge you a cheap rate. No having to buy multi-modal tickets, no worrying about who operates what. Just simplified easy transfers between operators.
The current ticketing set-up would have potential customers grabbing their car keys and not downloading a bus company's app.
Lower, easier-to-understand fares = more customers, more profit long term.
On-board service levels
Comfortable seating (as tested by real customers for long durations of time), a clean hygienic bus, fast reliable Wi-Fi and phone charging, real-time disruption information and places to socialise. As standard.
Then we move to customer service, the driver will be polite and knowledgeable, invested in consistently by the company - which in itself makes them actually cared for in work, in turn, they will treat the customers with the same level of care. Having loads of buses painted in special liveries wanting outsiders to "join the team" shows that there is a serious retention problem and that the money being spent on combating the high turnover should actually be spent on existing staff.
Customer Service teams should be locally based and knowledgeable about the service they provide. I mentioned Monzo earlier, I had a problem with the app when signing up, I used the in-app chat service and they fixed it in 5 seconds. Throughout the conversation, the advisor responded to messages instantly, called me by my preferred name and was courteous and polite. This should be a feature within bus company apps, if I have a question about fares or services, or I encountered a problem, I should be able to go into the app, and talk to someone there and then. Not crawl through websites, contact forms, posting it publicly on Facebook or Twitter or having to pick up a phone.
And those are just a few examples about how bus operators could take my (as well as other people's!) custom away from Audi and Shell.
