06 Jan 2020, 12:34 pm
#49
(06 Jan 2020, 1:20 am)omnicity4659 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.
(06 Jan 2020, 11:09 am)Storx Personally for me the biggest problem as Omnicity has mentioned is the lack of multi-operator tickets especially across boundaries. For me I don't and probably most people they don't care whether it's GNE, Arriva or Stagecoach unless they have to use more than one and then fork up multiple tickets or if buy an explorer at £10.90 that used to be £9.20 until recently.
I know this is a bus forum but I always think rail is one of the areas that's majorly underutilised up here for example we have approx 10 buses an hour between Cramlington and Newcastle yet no-one uses the railway since it's in the middle of nowhere (I know they want to change this) and it's way to expensive if you have to use another service. It's similar with most the ECML stations or ever worse at Pegswood and Widdrington they have a token service. Why not have buses running north from these to Amble etc then get them into Newcastle in half the time and much quicker than actually driving but we're more bothered about having 4 express trains an hour running to Edinburgh carrying fresh air most the day.
It's the same along the Hexham line and the Metro Centre which are both massively underused. I bet most people don't even realise there's a train from Newcastle to the Metro Centre why not let metro tickets use it where it's an easy'ish change at Central rather than having at least 8 buses an hour from Gateshead and Blackett Street doing express journeys. That's how you realistically get buses off the road.
(06 Jan 2020, 11:55 am)Ds1197 The rail services in the North East is pretty Crap that's why most people use the bus and large areas of the North East are no where near a train station. Take Hexham for example I'd rather get the bus so I don't need to walk up a steep hill. If cites are really serious about clean air they should think about banning cars all together Newcastle and Durham already have a park and ride sites and some metro station offer parking
You can have as many buses, as many railway stations and excellent levels of customer service as you want.
Until we see integrated transport, attractive journey times and attractive ticketing across the board, punters will continue using the car and patronage will continue to fall on public transport.
'Illegitimis non carborundum'
