Hallandstrafiken

Overview

With over 50.000 journeys a day, Hallandstrafiken ensures that residents of the Swedish region of Halland get from point A to point B safely and on time. They use Ombea ExpressPods in their stores to get a temperature reading of customer satisfaction with their face-to-face service. Using Ombea, Hallandstrafiken discovered big differences in customer satisfaction between locations and were able to pinpoint these to specific internal processes which took only small changes to address.

Industry

  • Transportation

Application

  • Passenger Experience
  • Customer Experience

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Problem

Before using Ombea, Hallandstrafiken had no real way of measuring customer satisfaction. They would make educated guesses on what they thought was going to improve or worsen customer satisfaction. In their own words, if no more than 1 or 2 people were complaining to them, then they assumed that “things are OK.”

Part of the problem with measuring customer satisfaction was its complexity. In public transportation, there are many different factors that can affect riders’ satisfaction. On one occasion, it could be delayed bus routes. On another, it could be negative interactions with Hallandstrafiken representatives.

Hallandstrafiken needed a simple way to stop throwing darts in the dark. They needed to establish a baseline for customer satisfaction at their on-site locations. They also needed to understand what factors affect customer satisfaction the most, and if it was possible to take action on these factors.

Solution

Hallandstrafiken uses the Ombea on-site module to track how customers perceive the services received in their ticketing and information locations. They place ExpressPod smiley terminals at the exit point, neither too close nor too far away from the service counter. This way, customers don’t feel like they’re being “spied on” while leaving their feedback.

Before choosing the exit point, Hallandstrafiken experimented with moving the ExpressPods around. This way, they determined that the exit point was the optimal placement where customers leave the most feedback.

Using Ombea, Hallandstrafiken can keep track of all their sites in different geographical locations. They can then compare how each location is performing against all the others on a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis.

They don’t need to log into the dashboard every day to get the birds-eye view. Hallandstrafiken checks the dashboard once a week, and get instant notifications if something needs their immediate attention.

Results

Clarity: Examining the feedback data, three sites showed extreme fluctuations between very satisfied and not satisfied at all. Cross-referencing this data with staff comments and data from the Swedish Transportation Administration (Trafikverket), they noticed a pattern. Whenever there was a problem with their train and tramway services, customer satisfaction dived. When service was restored, the euphoria would drive a boost in customer satisfaction. While not entirely something the company could control, now they knew they needed to focus on mitigating the consequences of these outages.

Confident employees: Whenever there was such a service interruption, employees felt powerless. Seeing the wave of angry customers approaching their desk made them anxious. Most times they had no idea themselves what the problem was. This inability to provide accurate information aggravated customers even more. This has now changed. The company now ensures that employees have a real-time update on the traffic situation, know exactly what to say to customers, and are equipped with the tools they need to address customer complaints.

Hard numbers: The guesswork is over. With over 50% of all customers leaving feedback, Hallandstrafiken developed benchmarks for all their service locations. At their staff meetings, this data is used to commend good work or take corrective action on lackluster performance. Furthermore, the feedback data encourages discussions between employees and management, as well as information transfer at a company-wide level.

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