Leading consultancy organisations Journey4 and The Buzzz have joined forces to launch a ground-breaking survey to examine travel behaviours as the country recovers from COVID-19.
It aims to understand likely user behaviour and confidence in the short-term (0-6 months) and responses to a couple of likely future scenarios over a 6 to 12-month horizon.
Jonathan Booth, a Director at Journey4, has written an article for railbusinessdaily.com saying now is the time to increase customer engagement and to plan interventions to rebuild customer confidence.
“UK businesses have learnt to adapt and change their business models and operate differently under strict lockdown measures because of the Coronavirus pandemic.
These changes, and the response of individuals to the pandemic, will inevitably impact travel behaviour and journeys to and from work for some time to come.
With pupils back in schools, organisations adapting their offices to make them safe for workers to return , and trains now operating at near full services one thing that isn’t increasing at such a level is the number of passengers travelling on trains.
That is why we feel now is the time to engage businesses and employees to understand their views on public transport and the level of confidence felt by the travelling public as furlough comes to an end and businesses transition to news way of working.
This will be key to understand and track over time. The survey will be of value to commissioners and operators of public transport services. It adopts a ‘wisdom of crowds’ approach to provide a quick, cost-effective alternative to a full user survey with a similar degree of confidence in the findings.
Early surveys of public perception highlight that for some segments of the workforce, working from home has become increasingly attractive. Many social commentators and economists believe that this situation has brought forward several forces which were gaining traction. The ability for many businesses to operate successfully under lockdown has underlined the potential benefits of home working to business owners and the advantages it can also bring for employees.
So, whilst there are clearly benefits to using public transport and a ‘green recovery’ has been promised by politicians, there are a number of factors at play that suggest the short-term reductions in public transport demand seen during the lockdown period won’t necessarily be reversed quickly.
Initial concerns about using public transport
People will inevitably have concerns about using public transport and even those who do use it because they have no alternative may not feel safe for some time, as we all adjust to social distancing and using face coverings. The YouGov Covid-19 behaviour change tracker shows that 61% of UK respondents seek to avoid crowded public places, (25th August 2020) so those who don’t have to travel on public transport are likely to avoid it if they can.
The level of confidence felt by the travelling public as working life returns to some degree of normality will be a key variable to understand and track over time. As we have seen there are already clear indicators that travel behaviours, among commuters in particular, have changed significantly in the short-term and it is not yet clear how long these changes will last.
For public transport operating companies, we believe that continuous engagement with customers throughout this period is therefore even more important than usual and that this should take two forms:
· Understanding how all customers, (users and non-users) feel about public transport services at present and what they expect a safe service to look like, (which we call customer expectations).
· Assessing how current customers, (users) find the experience of using public transport and what improvements they would like to see.
Looking at both these perspectives is critical if the industry is to work out what it can do to rebuild customer confidence. We can’t afford to make the assumption that current users of services are doing so happily and are comfortable about the experience. In fact, those current users that have a bad experience are more likely to discourage potential service users not to use public transport.
Building Customer Confidence
There is no quick fix to the current situation and it will take time to rebuild customer confidence, whatever rules and policies the Government enforces. There will also be a need to manage demand alongside the available capacity whilst services are fully ramped up and to take account of social distancing requirements.
The good news though is that there are things that the industry can do by looking at both sides of the coin – customer expectations and customer experience. Once we understand these dynamics, it will be clear what could be done to build confidence, interventions that generally fall into two camps:
· Push levers – such as Government and regional / local policy; promoting the benefits of public transport; working with businesses to spread demand; making it easier to use by improving accessibility to services and offering flexible ticketing arrangements.
· Pull levers – such as increasing customer engagement; actively promoting safety measures; ensuring service delivery is consistent and visibly demonstrates the safety of using public transport; communications activities to share new practices such as distancing and cleaning measures and associated success stories with the wider public.
We believe that now is the time to increase customer engagement and to plan these interventions to ensure that customer confidence rebuilds over time.”
Jonathan Booth, Director, Journey4. www.journey4.co.uk
Photo credit: Journey4
Click here to read more guest writer articles.
