oliverputtick.com

The Challenge

Our partners, the Train Operating Companies, wanted to provide customers (using fixed tickets) the ability to change their journey. A whopping 70% of calls to customer support are for ticket changes alone, costing UK rail £210m per year.

From the outset, we already knew a little about the problems experienced by passengers on the U.K rail network. It's no secret that Train Companies have a less than favourable reputation amongst travellers, 58% of which do not think they get value for money.

Target Audience

As we were focusing on flexibility, our target audience were Advance Purchase Ticket Holders. This is the most popular way to ticket type in the U.K, and the most restricted. These customers are able to secure lower prices by travelling on a specified service (effectively sacrificing flexibility for affordability).

Although it's possible to make last minute changes to these tickets, it isn't cheap. A customer is able to swap to a new on-the-day service by paying the difference between their original ticket and the new one.

Unfortunately, a change can cost up to 7x the price of what was originally paid, making on-the-day changes inaccessible for most customers.

Discovery

There was clearly an opportunity here and we decided to survey our user base and quantify the size of the problem. Going into the exercise, I was cautiously optimistic that we were onto something, however…

We found that almost 85% of respondents wanted to swap their train within the last 12 months but didn't.

Why was this happening? I planned, facilitated and conducted empathy interviews with a range of different customers to find out.

1/ Advance Ticket Holders were priced out of flexibility

It seemed that almost everybody we spoke with had an anecdote about trying to switch services, but ultimately didn't because of the cost. The ones with the biggest problem were those looking to change trains on-the-day of travel. They felt as though they were being unfairly penalised and couldn't understand why.

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2/ Customers had a predetermined ‘Boredom Budget’

In this scenario, travellers would kill time by eating, drinking or shopping. This is extremely important because it meant they were happy to spend (something we started referring to as the boredom budget), the money just wasn't going to the train Operator.

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3/ Illegal work-arounds meant missed revenue

There was another option available to passengers with a slightly higher tolerance for risk...one interview participant actually admitted to catching an earlier service and then dodging the ticket inspector onboard!

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The Solution

Digging into our research had validated our hypothesis and revealed a group of customers that had slipped through the cracks. Expensive fares meant flexible Anytime Tickets were often unaffordable for your everyday passenger, and changes to an Advance Ticket weren't feasible either.

Although customers were prepared to spend some money at the station, the high prices for switching to another service on-the-day made this option totally inaccessible!

The solution was Seatfrog Trainswap, a web product allowing travellers to quickly change their departure times at an affordable price.

Key challenges

Although designing an interface allowing passengers to make a swap seemed straight forward enough (more on this later), two key challenges had emerged regarding the proposition for both travellers and operators;

1. How might we price swaps in a way that was affordable for travellers & operators?

2. How might we restrict swaps to ensure Anytime Ticket sales were not cannibalised?

1/ From unaffordable, to within reach

Previously, to make an on-the-day change, customers were charged the difference between the cost of their original ticket and a new one. As the price of tickets rises the closer you are to departure, the delta grows, putting changes out of reach for most customers.

With Train Swap, the approach was different. To switch trains, customers ONLY pay the difference between two brand new tickets on those services. It meant affordable changes for travellers, and the sale of an otherwise empty seat for operators.

2/ Avoiding Cannibalisation

The product is intended to give Advance Ticket holders added flexibility, not to provide existing Anytime Ticket holders with a cheaper alternative.

To prevent this issue, Train Swaps are only allowed within 24h of departure (when seats are most scarce). This adds an element of risk into the system, and means that if you want to guarantee added flexibility when making your original purchase decision, paying slightly more for an Anytime Ticket is the safer option.

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Seat reservations and customers concerns

Due to technical requirements, customers are allocated a seat reservation after they've purchased their Swap. This meant that initially, no seat reservation was mentioned on the Review and Pay screen.

This was an oversight on my part, and was reflected during a poor round of testing. Seat reservations are one of the main benefits Advance Ticket Holders receive, and customers were worried that they would miss out when making a swap.

A simple line of copy addressed the issue and put passengers concerns at ease.

Shortcutting the swap

Although it would be possible for indirect customers to land on the website, we were anticipating that the majority of our traffic would be direct (as we planned to advertise the product on our apps and through our partner channels).

In this scenario, the website knows your original travel details already. This allowed customers coming through direct channels to skip journey input steps, and jump straight into confirming their seat reservation.

Journey Reminders

Because swaps open 24 hours before departure, it was important we provided an option for passengers wanting to make a change ahead of this window.

To reach these potential customers, I created a simple feature called the Journey Reminder. Users that select a date outside of the 24 hour window are notified the service isn't yet open, and are given the option to sign-up for an email notification.

These emails also function as 'deeplinks' allowing users to shortcut their swap as soon as it's open.

The Impact

Overall, Train Swap has achieved the goals we set out to accomplish. Feedback from customers has been overwhelmingly positive, with 90% of users reporting that they are getting good value for money.

In addition, the product was chosen as a winner of the FOAK competition and secured a significant chunk of funding from the Department for Transport.

This was a contributing factor to the company’s survival throughout the pandemic, and will continue to play a part in its future as passenger numbers steadily return to capacity.

Unfortunately, COVID-19 meant the end of the line for many travel businesses and startups. For Seatfrog though, I’m pleased to say that it’s only the beginning.

Thanks for reading this case study!
If you would like to know more about this project, please contact me.

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