IBM and transport provider National Express Group recently announced a series of cloud-based innovations aimed at transforming the global transport operator by improving operational performance and customer experience.
National Express’s rail franchise—c2c, serving 26 stations in East London and South Essex in the U.K., is using the latest mobile technology to provide real-time travel planning and data analytics to enable better business decision-making.
Mike Tansey, Executive, Travel & Transport of IBM, shared his thoughts with Loyalty360 about the partnership with National Express Group, which delivers services in the North America, the U.K., Spain, Morocco and Germany, with more than 800 million journeys made on their buses, trains, light rail services and coaches each year.
What factors prompted IBM to partner with National Express Group and how will IBM help transform National Express Group’s customer experience?
The systemic challenge in the transport industry is not the lack of data, but that this data is fragmented across a myriad of legacy internal and external systems. This has a direct negative impact on customer experience, particularly in disruption, as both operators and customers are unable to get a 
consistent view of the truth and make appropriate decisions in real time. IBM has a market leading proposition, IBM Intelligent Operations Center (IOC), as part of its Smarter Cities initiative and National Express franchise c2c caught the vision of being able to improve operational performance and customer experience through the consumption and analysis of all their data.
IBM will help transform National Express’s customer experience through the consumption and correlation of operational and customer data to enable efficient operational decision-making and improved customer communications. For example, the IOC will know if a train is delayed and can then identify the passengers on that train through ticket purchase data and onboard Wi-Fi data. In the simplest form, the IOC will communicate direct to the customers via their mobile apps to apologize and keep them updated of progress in real time. The IOC can also automatically identify passengers with more complicated journeys involving connections and recalculate their journeys in real time and again communicate this direct to them via their mobile apps.
How will the CX innovations built on the IBM Cloud by IBM Interactive Experience impact the National Express Group’s customer experience delivery?
The IBM innovations will have a dramatic positive impact on National Express’s customer experience delivery, as, for the first time, they will have transparency on who their customers are but more importantly how they are impacted by the operations. For example, the IOC will be used to identify systemic operational issues within the network so that c2c can focus their efforts on resolving them. The customers may know that a particular train is delayed every Tuesday afternoon at 14:30, but this may be opaque as a trend in the operational systems. The IOC will identify this trend and highlight possible causes.
These innovations are unique because the IOC platform for the first time enables transport organizations to consume, analyze,and optimize a huge amount of disparate data in real time and more importantly respond with a consistent and data driven approach.
How will these innovations create a more holistic view of the c2c customer?
The IOC will enable c2c to capture every customer interaction such as ticket purchase, journeys taken, ancillary purchases, content viewed via the portal, social media activity and delays experienced. Compared to the previous state when they only knew which customers had bought season tickets, this is a huge step change and will enable them to better understand their customers’ patterns of behavior and respond appropriately.
What does CX mean to IBM and to c2c?
Ultimately, the vision for customer experience for IBM and c2c is having the ability to deliver a highly personalized service to each and every customer. This personalization can only be delivered by understanding each customer as an individual and being able to respond accordingly. Half of this equation is capturing the data to understand the customer, which will be delivered by the IOC. The second half is delivering this insight to c2c staff so that they can respond to the customers. The IBM mobile platform built on IOC is a critical element of this process.
With the increase in use of mobile devices customers now expect accurate, real-time information and updates on the move. To satisfy customer expectations, IBM and c2c devised customer experience innovations built on the IBM Cloud by IBM Interactive Experience which include:
A new style of real-time mobile app for customers to easily plan their trip door-to -oor by postal code. Customers can track specific trains, and even check if there is a coffee shop and other services available in stations. Regular disruption alerts will also be provided so customers are kept updated while on the move.
Up-to-date information will be available to on-platform staff equipped with mobile devices to provide real time information to customers on train schedules and status.
National Express is working with IBM Interactive Experience, a consultancy and systems integrator, to improve customer engagement by using data analytics to deliver relevant, personalized brand experiences. The apps are built using the IBM MobileFirst Platform, which includes a complete range of tools for developers to create, deploy, manage and secure mobile apps, on-premise or in the cloud, and is fully integrated with the IOC.