We recently met with Bus & Coach Buyer to chat about how we’ve created new processes and teams to help customers gain the maximum value from their solutions.
You can read the feature below, or visit Bus & Coach Buyer for the full article.
Being a longstanding technology company requires more than simply developing and supplying products; ongoing support and strong working relationships are huge factors in driving customer success.
Richard Blackburn-Hughes, Ticketer Chief Commercial Officer, explains some recent initiatives to further enhance Ticketer’s offering in these areas.
Maximising value from the Ticketer system
A key development to maximise value from the Ticketer system is the recent creation of a team of Customer Success Directors (CSDs). Richard said: “Our CSDs are experienced people, they’ve previously all worked in other Ticketer teams, from customer support to implementation. They’re experts on our solutions.”
Each customer now has a CSD assigned to them, creating a dedicated point of contact to reach out to and who understands the nuances of their business. Establishing a UK-based team with extensive Ticketer solutions experience means the CSDs can proactively organise in-person meetings and review what software infrastructure each customer has in place, helping customers to maximise the value from their solutions.
Richard said: “Our CSDs are out visiting customers and ensuring any queries or enhancements are being addressed during what we call ‘Ticketer System Health Checks’. These are a deep dive on their ticket machine software and everything with their back-office. The CSDs ensure it’s all setup and working as it should be and will then go through new features we’ve developed, ensuring they are well understood and that our customers are getting the best possible value from their Ticketer system.”
Richard continued: “Over the last year or so we’ve developed lots of new features like improved tracking pages and different views around performance against schedule. Customers aren’t always aware we’ve added those features, so this is an opportunity to showcase them and see if that’s something they want to deploy.”
“We’re continuously trying to evolve our solutions and want to make all customers aware that new enhancements exist and help them take full advantage of them.“
Richard Blackburn-Hughes, Chief Commerical Officer
Other examples of feature enhancements the CSDs will cover during the Ticketer System Health Checks include a new night mode for their ETMs, where the console’s screen changes colour to make it easier on the eye when viewed at night. Ticketer has also added new Schedule Adherence views, including a view that reveals information on upcoming stops.
Richard said: “We’re continuously trying to evolve our solutions and want to make all customers aware that new enhancements exist and help them take full advantage of them.”
“My team of CSDs are currently reaching out to their allocated customers to arrange these checks, but of course customers who are reading can also reach out to us directly if they’d prefer.”
While the Ticketer System Health Checks can be done remotely, Richard explains their preference is to do them in person: “Given our CSDs have such expansive knowledge of our solutions, we can action many requests in-person and provide the quickest possible resolution, or easily switch on the latest functionality and give the necessary training whilst on-site.”
Improving operational insights
Ticketer has also recently focussed on how the data its system collects can provide actionable insights for customers at the click of a button. Richard said: “We’ve done a lot of work to make our reporting functionality more queryable and easier for our customers to understand and use.”
“We recently soft launched the Ticketer Insights Hub, which is now available to all customers. It’s our suite of Business Intelligence (BI) dashboards that they can access for interactive fleet performance reports. We currently have dashboards focussed on passenger occupancy, passenger boarding, revenue and ticket sales.”
“Customers with Tap On / Tap Off get a series of dashboards showing where passengers are getting both on and off, and that’s really interesting because you’re getting full visibility of the passenger journey and are able to use that information for network planning.”
“What’s great about the Insights Hub is that the dashboards are very interactive. You can slice them and dice them as you want. Being able to see that information graphically rather than in standard tabular form means you don’t have to be a data whizz to make sense of it and can easily use it to make operational improvements. You’re also able to see data going back to 2021; that’s great in terms of being able to give operators that long-term view.”
“…The dashboards are very interactive. You can slice them and dice them as you want… You don’t have to be a data whizz to make sense of it and can easily use it to make operational improvements.“
Richard Blackburn-Hughes, Chief Commerical Officer
Further dashboards are also due to be rolled out, Richard reports: “You will be able to look at Schedule Adherence reports, things like early and late running by drivers, in the future.”
Ticketer Repair Centre
Also among Ticketer’s customer-centric changes is the creation of an in-house Ticketer Repair Centre for the company’s hardware.
Richard said: “Earlier this year, we set up our own repair facility from our Hungerford head office to run alongside our outsourced partner. By taking control of the majority of repairs, we’re able to more effectively prioritise hardware coming in, offer greater transparency on the status and turnaround times, and also quality assure hardware before we send it back.
Bringing it in-house has been a really exciting development. We know it’s the right thing to do for our customers as it allows better agility and flexibility for them during the repairs process and means we can get repairs turned around more and more quickly for them.”
Continued developments
This all follows last year’s major development of Ticketer’s Next Generation ETM. “More and more are taking advantage and updating their machines,” said Richard. The device is designed to offer improvements in terms of general performance, speed and card reader processing times. It is an Android tablet-based system, with a fixed version and a detachable version available in future which will be able to be used to complete vehicle walk around checks.
There is currently a mix of new and previous generation Ticketer machines in operation. Richard said: “One of the benefits is you can run both alongside each other. It’s been a good way for customers to phase in the new machine rather than go through wholesale replacement.”
“One of the benefits is you can run both alongside each other. It’s been a good way for customers to phase in the new machine rather than go through wholesale replacement.”
Richard Blackburn-Hughes on phasing in the Next Generation ETM upgrades
Other enhancements for Ticketer users include improved functionality of its Road Restriction Alerts feature. Richard said: “When we developed it during Covid, it was developed around low-bridge alerts. We received significant interest from operators around expanding it to include other types of restrictions, which we launched earlier this year. Navigational restrictions can now be added, for example ‘no left turn’ and so on, which will be great as we move into autumn and winter; for example, in the event of icy roads or low hanging branches.”
Ticketer is also working with LittlePay to provide extra anti-fraud features.
“Our key philosophy is to keep those enhancements coming, drip feeding them rather than customers having to wait for ‘big bang’ developments,” Richard said.
Ticketer Customer Roadshows
Last but certainly not least, Ticketer is further ensuring customers are getting the most from their solutions with its new series of Ticketer Customer Roadshows. It recently held its first in Bristol, with the company’s team on-hand to answer customers’ queries. It included formal presentations around Ticketer’s recent developments, as well as clinics around getting the most out of the Ticketer system.
Richard explains why Ticketer is putting even more focus on aftercare: “We’ve scaled up significantly as a business and we’re really conscious that as we do, we need to ensure the end-to-end experience for customers is high quality. That’s why we’ve implemented these new processes and teams for our customers wherever they are in their cycle, either new and getting on-boarded or a long-term customer of ours.”