Well, today as I was getting late for my lunch, I quickly decided to explore the option of whether I can take a bus to the restaurant - if that bus is going to arrive soon. Yes, I took out my mobile phone, opened an app, and checked the waiting time for next bus arriving at the stop right in front of the school.
And while I did take the bus, once again I could not resist thinking of the recent innovations in service level management that this sector of bus transportation has undergone, at least in the major cities of the world.
So, let us go back around five years - and I am going to refer to the cities in developed countries here in this blog, to establish a commonality in the comparisons that will follow.
Resuming our story, five years ago, while in Tokyo, when I took a bus, I checked what is the timing of next bus. The absolute time like 8:15 AM, 8:30 AM. The bus service though, was top class, always on-time arrival, modern, passenger friendly buses, and a smart card enabled entry and exit system. Life was good.
But then, even during those days, I wondered, will this on-time arrival and other features sustain when the population grows further, when cities of the future will have many more cars and private vehicles on the street, and in times when the bus may break down in middle of the road?
Soon enough though, when I started working in Singapore, I found answer to most of these questions. I came to know of a mobile phone app, which tells me the exact waiting time for every bus that arrives on the stop, of which I know a stop ID. Pretty impressive.
And then, when I arrived in Madrid, the first thing I looked for, was such an app for the city transport here and downloaded the app immediately.
And all this is the story that I would narrate as a passenger of buses in these cities, before I started my MBA.
However, MBA at IE Business School introduced me to some new concepts in service level management. I mean, I knew of the framework and the processes and the functions required and involved in operations management, from an IT organization point of view, but now it was time for taking in to account more fundamental concepts and most generic implementations.
So, I learned about the Moment of the Truth and the Service Triad, and then this whole city bus story changed into an excellent case of service level management for me.
When a customer interacts with your firm, and this can occur in multiple ways, that moment is the moment of truth; and when his perception of quality delivered exceeds [or at least matches] his expectations of quality, that is when your firm can be said to have attained its desired service level.
So, imagine a scenario, when you are the display on a bus stop says, next bus is at 12:30 PM and this bus gets stuck in traffic jam. Yes, we will all know that there would have to be some problem for the bus to be late, but we will all also feel disappointed when the bus arrives at 12:35 PM instead of the announced time of 12:30 PM. This is immediately a service level breach, and it creates disappointed customers.
So, how can this be turned around? Can technology help?
Yes, technology did help. Instead of pre-announcing the timing, how about telling how much more time the bus will take to reach the stop - Add a GPS tracker to the Bus, link it to a portal, publish updates of this portal to mobile apps and web sites and we have a partial solution to the issue.
Remember, we have three parts to the moment of truth, first the contact, second the perception and third the expectation of the service. By tracking the bus location and linking it with waiting time, instead of committing on a definite time, transport company can now manage the customers expectations. Customers now no longer expect the bus to arrive at 12:30 PM, but depending on when they check, they expect it to arrive in 5 minutes and if the bus gets stuck in traffic, these 5 minutes won't change until the bus moves forward. Unless, there is some extreme issue, in which case everyone will suffer and everyone will know of the issue, this new real time monitoring of waiting time has succeeded quite well in customer expectations management.
Next comes the issue of contact. Well, as I said, even five years back in Tokyo, or later in Singapore and now in Madrid, the buses have been modern, they are smart card friendly, they allow occasional ticket purchases, they are suitable for the elderly and the disabled, and so I think as far as the contact between city bus transport as a service goes, there has always been a good stature for at least for the cities I have been to [and I assume its the same for other big cities of the developed countries] and this takes care of the contact aspect.
So, finally we have the issue of perception. How does the customer perceive the service delivered? And this factor can be influenced by the interaction with staff, by the after-service support provided, by the psychology and the mood of the customer. As per me, this is the most grey area, and various firms keep doing multiple things like feedback, surveys, etc to gauge how the customer perception of their service is. In our specific example of City Bus, I found the answer in the way roads and pavements have been planned in either Singapore or Madrid.
Both these cities have dedicated lanes for Buses [and Taxis]. How does this help in managing the customer perception? It is one of the mechanisms that demonstrates the message from administration, that we understand what issues can occur for providing you with the best public transport [bus] service, and we will do everything possible to remove these hurdles. As per me, its also an excellent example of the Continuous Service Improvement.
Understand what stands between a bus reaching exactly as per the waiting time committed, and try to work on removing these hurdles - if traffic is an issue, separate the rest of the traffic flow from buses and let buses have their own lanes.
And as a customer, when I see these efforts, my perception of the service that I get from the City Bus, always meets my expectations.
Add to it, on those few days, when I was on-board a bus in Singapore, and I saw the bus driver getting down, laying out the raft for on-boarding the passengers in wheel-chair and getting back to his/her seat, this perception in-fact exceeded my expectations.
[Haven't taken buses that many times around here in Madrid, so didn't come across such incident here yet, but I do see a space provisioned for wheelchairs in some buses here and can imagine a similar thing]
So that's the moment of truth and the CSI initiative which I came across in the most common thing we see in our life - the city bus :-)
All reactions, comments, stories from readers welcome :-)
And while I did take the bus, once again I could not resist thinking of the recent innovations in service level management that this sector of bus transportation has undergone, at least in the major cities of the world.
So, let us go back around five years - and I am going to refer to the cities in developed countries here in this blog, to establish a commonality in the comparisons that will follow.
Resuming our story, five years ago, while in Tokyo, when I took a bus, I checked what is the timing of next bus. The absolute time like 8:15 AM, 8:30 AM. The bus service though, was top class, always on-time arrival, modern, passenger friendly buses, and a smart card enabled entry and exit system. Life was good.
But then, even during those days, I wondered, will this on-time arrival and other features sustain when the population grows further, when cities of the future will have many more cars and private vehicles on the street, and in times when the bus may break down in middle of the road?
Soon enough though, when I started working in Singapore, I found answer to most of these questions. I came to know of a mobile phone app, which tells me the exact waiting time for every bus that arrives on the stop, of which I know a stop ID. Pretty impressive.
And then, when I arrived in Madrid, the first thing I looked for, was such an app for the city transport here and downloaded the app immediately.
And all this is the story that I would narrate as a passenger of buses in these cities, before I started my MBA.
However, MBA at IE Business School introduced me to some new concepts in service level management. I mean, I knew of the framework and the processes and the functions required and involved in operations management, from an IT organization point of view, but now it was time for taking in to account more fundamental concepts and most generic implementations.
So, I learned about the Moment of the Truth and the Service Triad, and then this whole city bus story changed into an excellent case of service level management for me.
When a customer interacts with your firm, and this can occur in multiple ways, that moment is the moment of truth; and when his perception of quality delivered exceeds [or at least matches] his expectations of quality, that is when your firm can be said to have attained its desired service level.
So, imagine a scenario, when you are the display on a bus stop says, next bus is at 12:30 PM and this bus gets stuck in traffic jam. Yes, we will all know that there would have to be some problem for the bus to be late, but we will all also feel disappointed when the bus arrives at 12:35 PM instead of the announced time of 12:30 PM. This is immediately a service level breach, and it creates disappointed customers.
So, how can this be turned around? Can technology help?
Yes, technology did help. Instead of pre-announcing the timing, how about telling how much more time the bus will take to reach the stop - Add a GPS tracker to the Bus, link it to a portal, publish updates of this portal to mobile apps and web sites and we have a partial solution to the issue.
Remember, we have three parts to the moment of truth, first the contact, second the perception and third the expectation of the service. By tracking the bus location and linking it with waiting time, instead of committing on a definite time, transport company can now manage the customers expectations. Customers now no longer expect the bus to arrive at 12:30 PM, but depending on when they check, they expect it to arrive in 5 minutes and if the bus gets stuck in traffic, these 5 minutes won't change until the bus moves forward. Unless, there is some extreme issue, in which case everyone will suffer and everyone will know of the issue, this new real time monitoring of waiting time has succeeded quite well in customer expectations management.
Next comes the issue of contact. Well, as I said, even five years back in Tokyo, or later in Singapore and now in Madrid, the buses have been modern, they are smart card friendly, they allow occasional ticket purchases, they are suitable for the elderly and the disabled, and so I think as far as the contact between city bus transport as a service goes, there has always been a good stature for at least for the cities I have been to [and I assume its the same for other big cities of the developed countries] and this takes care of the contact aspect.
So, finally we have the issue of perception. How does the customer perceive the service delivered? And this factor can be influenced by the interaction with staff, by the after-service support provided, by the psychology and the mood of the customer. As per me, this is the most grey area, and various firms keep doing multiple things like feedback, surveys, etc to gauge how the customer perception of their service is. In our specific example of City Bus, I found the answer in the way roads and pavements have been planned in either Singapore or Madrid.
Both these cities have dedicated lanes for Buses [and Taxis]. How does this help in managing the customer perception? It is one of the mechanisms that demonstrates the message from administration, that we understand what issues can occur for providing you with the best public transport [bus] service, and we will do everything possible to remove these hurdles. As per me, its also an excellent example of the Continuous Service Improvement.
Understand what stands between a bus reaching exactly as per the waiting time committed, and try to work on removing these hurdles - if traffic is an issue, separate the rest of the traffic flow from buses and let buses have their own lanes.
And as a customer, when I see these efforts, my perception of the service that I get from the City Bus, always meets my expectations.
Add to it, on those few days, when I was on-board a bus in Singapore, and I saw the bus driver getting down, laying out the raft for on-boarding the passengers in wheel-chair and getting back to his/her seat, this perception in-fact exceeded my expectations.
[Haven't taken buses that many times around here in Madrid, so didn't come across such incident here yet, but I do see a space provisioned for wheelchairs in some buses here and can imagine a similar thing]
So that's the moment of truth and the CSI initiative which I came across in the most common thing we see in our life - the city bus :-)
All reactions, comments, stories from readers welcome :-)
