Peter Knight, Operations Director at Stagecoach’s Scottish Citylink, has made a name for himself since joining the company in 2010. With his efforts having been rewarded at this year’s UK Coach Awards, Angela Youngman found out more about his story
Less than 10 years after joining the coach industry as a graduate management trainee, Peter Knight received one of the highest accolades within the sector – the Young Coach Industry Professional Gold Award. His success was richly deserved, due to the level of accomplishments he has achieved within a short time. In just 18 months, he had successfully undertaken a transformation of the Scottish Citylink business. According to the judges, his nomination was head and shoulders above the competition.
“I was nominated by my Managing Director, Robert Andrew of Scottish Citylink,” said Peter. “I didn’t know about it until way down the line. I was chuffed to bits when I won. It is very nice to be recognised for what you are doing.”
After joining Stagecoach as a graduate trainee in 2010, Peter’s ability was quickly recognised. Within three years, he had undertaken various operations manager roles in the Midlands and was then asked to take on a general manager’s role, setting up a new Megabus venture in Italy.
Confronting challenges
It was undoubtedly a major challenge, as Peter explains: “I never expected my career with Stagecoach would take me to work in Italy. It was a memorable 18 months. There was a three-strong team – two managers and myself. We had to set the business up from scratch.
“We were based in Milan and we had to do all the planning. It was very hard work. The Megabus Italy venture started with 20 to 30 coaches. We had to find 150 drivers, maintenance areas and set up two depots. There were all kinds of challenges, especially how to deal with vehicle maintenance and changeovers in order to create a fully operational network.
“At the time, there was nothing else like it in the country,” he continued. “There were no other low-cost intercity coach operations like us, as the Italian coach sector was mostly small family companies working in their own area. It was hard to explain what we were aiming to do because the concept was so new, so different. It was important not to automatically impose our ideas but to tailor the concept to suit the country. I could speak a bit of basic Italian, but I did depend on translators to do the technical stuff.”
The hard work undoubtedly paid off. As soon as the new venture was operational, customer demand skyrocketed. It went off the scale. Megabus Italy attracted 30,000 customers in the first week, travelling to 13 destinations within Italy from bases in Bergamo, Florence and Naples.
Returning home
Following the sale of Megabus Europe, Peter was recalled to the UK to take up a new challenge – Operations Director at Scottish Citylink. In his new position, he became responsible for the operation of Stagecoach’s coach service in Scotland, as well as the cross-border services operated by Megabus between Scotland and England. Help was provided by a management team of four, keen to keep the 94-vehicle operation fully effective. Customer service, finance, marketing and operations all came within his remit.
He realised that there were important issues that had to be quickly faced in order to run a high-quality service. “I encountered a number of challenges and issues relating to financial performance and business issues with subcontractors, and general performance overall,” he said.
“It was mostly driven by productivity and relationship issues, as we needed our subcontractor’s drivers to feel they were part of Citylink in order to deliver a more consistent service. Our management team had not been spending time with the subcontractors, relying on emails. I needed to change the business from the bottom up.”
To make matters worse, trading conditions during the early part of 2017 were relatively tough for Scottish Citylink. A deep dive analysis had to be undertaken to identify profitable and unprofitable mileage, while continuing to serve as much of Scotland as possible. As a result, the second half of the financial year proved to be much more productive. Performance monitoring spreadsheets and trend data has continued to be monitored and revenue improvement projects introduced.
All change
Typical actions included the creation of a new livery, and a new tourist guide publication encouraging travel around some of the UK’s most scenic bus routes in Scotland. Scottish Citylink launched extremely competitive £10 return ‘Summer Special’ fares on the 900 (Glasgow to Edinburgh) service, as a way of ensuring that it was always the lowest price option when compared to the price points of train tickets.
The 900 service was also converted to a 24/7 business, allowing excess mileage to be redeployed into the overnight hours, thus creating a USP when compared to the train options. As a result, Citylink was able to maintain its position within the market yet use less resources overall, while the night services covered direct costs of operation after only three months. Passenger numbers and profits have grown significantly.
Improving communications with stakeholders was a priority. His immediate reaction was typical: he went out and visited all of the company’s subcontractors, including those in remote locations. Equally important was improving the working relationship between the Glasgow team and the remote team based in England, which provided commercial support. Establishing personal contact was essential in order to bring about improvements in passenger experience and service delivery, as well as the overall working business relationships.
Peter commented: “A big part of the problem was the fact that people did not know what they were expected to do. I devised and delivered a new customer service course so as to create a consistent service across all drivers. It was a matter of training people.”
A winning formula
In addition, Citylink had to undertake a variety of large projects within a short period of time including major schedule changes, deployment of new ticket machines and the conversion to ‘gold’ standard on a key route. The success of these projects played a major part in ensuring the success of Peter’s award-winning nomination.
Managing Director Robert Andrew explains: “Scottish Citylink embarked on a programme of ticket machine renewal across the entire fleet in November 2017. This introduced contactless payment for the first time for the benefit of our customers.
“However, given the PCI compliance issues around the new machines, which are effectively a live bank terminal, a work package of subcontractor awareness and buy in was required to ensure that these companies were aware of the implications of machine security and that there was a step change in the current ticket machine management practices.
“As well as visiting all of the subcontractors to personally communicate this message and discuss concerns with them, workshop sessions were convened at the company’s offices in Glasgow to go through detailed operator and driver training that was required to ensure a seamless transition onto the new ticket machines.
“With this preparatory work Peter led, the cut-over to the new ticketing system went very smoothly with Peter on the ground test purchasing tickets, talking to passengers and discussing with drivers how the new technology benefited them and offering any assistance and guidance that was required.”
Equally comprehensive was his reaction to the conversion of the M90 service between Edinburgh and Inverness to ‘Gold’ standard. This marked a major improvement both in service delivery and in the overall passenger experience.
He was closely involved in every aspect of the programme, including decisions on vehicle specification, staff customer service training, recruitment of new onboard host staff as well as the creation of traditional and digital marketing campaigns to increase consumer awareness of the new standard. The project culminated in launch events in Edinburgh and Inverness, along with personally trying out the service on the first day, to make sure that quality standards were not only being met but exceeded.
Just the beginning
Peter commented: “There is still much more to do. The business is a work in progress, and there are lots of exciting things in the pipeline – especially dealing with digital opportunities and customer service projects focusing on reviewing processes and how we deal with complaints and customer enquiries in the Glasgow call centre.”
He is also planning to put more of his staff in for awards, both regional and national, as a result of his own experience. As he indicates: “Winning the Gold Award gave me a lot of confidence. Citylink won several awards that night and we have them on display in reception. We immediately shared our achievement, sending out a newsletter and buying a little memento of our success for each of our drivers.
“They are our front-line employees, dealing with the public on a daily basis. It is very important to recognise the work undertaken by our staff. They spend 40 hours of their life at work each week. We have to support and encourage them – and that involves putting more of my staff in for awards, as these give recognition and a sense of achievement.”