The Onboard Experience – A Critical Piece to the Ridership

The rumble of the plane vibrates under your feet. You are on your first vacation in years to a dream destination. Excitement whirls inside and you can’t wait to land and explore a new city. After arriving to your hotel, the first thing you want to do is explore — see that amazing building or cool monument you’ve always dreamt of visiting. For this example, let’s say we are in London, England.

While approximately 77 percent of Americans own a smartphone, international data can be expensive and Wi-Fi can be spotty at times, so relying on your phone to show you the way might be difficult. You hop on the bus to see Big Ben, London Eye, or watch a play at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. But, you aren’t quite sure which direction you need to go — let’s face it, driving on the left-hand side of the road is confusing if you aren’t familiar with it. You get on the bus, but all you know is that you need to get to Trafalgar Square. You are likely unfamiliar with the stops in between and not sure if you are actually heading in the correct direction.

You hop on and hope for the best. As you are sitting there, you look up and you see a sign letting you know that next stop is Prince of Wales Gate and it’s only one minute away, but it also highlights some of the major stops and it says arrival to Trafalgar Square is in 20 minutes. Voila, you now know you are heading in the correct direction and in a short commute, you will be officially enjoying some relaxing time on your vacation.

Forgetting About the Onboard Experience

Most of us are familiar with the routes we use on a regular basis, but if you have to go somewhere new, it’s likely you will need to do some trip planning to figure it out. Much of this infrastructure to make traveling with your agency is already in place. Most agencies have some sort of trip planner and whether it is web-based, an agency’s own homegrown mobile app, or a third-party app like Google Maps, your riders are using it to plan their trips.

But what makes us forget about communicating with passengers about the duration of their trip?

Onboard Information is Currently Overboard

The endless amount of responsibilities you have as an agency might mean that this part of the trip has been missed. Once a rider is onboard, most of the work has been completed. All that remains is for them to get off the bus. But … that’s not always the case.

Often you see riders (locals or tourists) constantly take out their phone and double check which stop is theirs and how much longer it is going to take. While it is great for tourists and people unfamiliar with the route to know they are heading in the correct direction, your everyday riders likely focus more on the time of their trip — they want to know when they are going to get to work or get home.

The Psychology of Waiting for the Train

Jumping back to the first iteration of real-time mobile apps, you can see a shift in the perception of your passengers. This directly relates to passenger satisfaction. There have been a few studies (out of Chicago, Tampa, Atlanta and Seattle) in the past years that have proved that giving the time of their next vehicle gives riders a better chance to plan their lives. They also hit on a psychological factor that having the approximate time makes you think you have been waiting less time than you actually have. Conversely, not having any idea of the next bus makes you think you’ve been waiting longer than you have.

The even cooler thing about the introduction of real-time apps is that these studies found a direct correlation to an increase in ridership and passenger satisfaction. Happy passengers means more passengers.

Passenger Satisfaction is … Satisfying

Don’t believe the transit facts? Take a look at one of the top-rated companies for customer satisfaction, Amazon.com. Let’s focus on their customer buying cycle (which can be seen as your passenger’s journey): they show the progress of an order. It might not be real-time (like we can do in transit), but it gives customers piece of mind knowing where their purchase is — processing, prepping for shipment, shipped, on its way, arrived.

Knowing how long you will have to wait to get something or get somewhere is a common occurrence for every single one of us. So keep in mind that operating the best customer-focused service you can will help build the satisfaction level of your riders.

Sounds Expensive — Infotainment to the Rescue

Understandably, most agencies are very cost conscious and with all the other things you have to worry about, implementing a new system might seem tedious and costly. The really cool thing about this technology is the fact that you can also use it for location-based advertising. Because the system is connected to your automatic vehicle location (AVL) system, you can be really specific with the type of advertisements that are populated.

These location-specific advertisements provide value to passengers as well. So, not only are you able to recoup costs and give the riders the real-time info on their trip, they will also be getting ads that relate to them because of their location. Did they know there is a great new place for brunch just around the corner? Or can they save money with an on bus promo code from Starbucks? All around it’s a win-win-win (a win for your agency, a win for your riders and a win for local businesses).

Sharing is Caring

Having a solid revenue generator — that isn’t your transit fares — is a nice bonus, but remember the real goal in this: to give your riders the information they are constantly craving. They want it in the planning, decision and riding phases of their trips.

As an industry, with all the other things we need to worry about (faring costs, operational efficiency, etc.), we sometimes forget that there is even more to be done regarding passenger satisfaction. In reality, there is still a bunch of information that can be shared.

Nick Ross is Industry Solutions Manager - Intelligent Transportation Systems with Trapeze.