Transdev Blazefield subsidiary The Burnley Bus Company won gold at the UK Bus Awards with its ‘Make My Mainline’ market research programme back in November. Madaline Dunn speaks to Ben Mansfield, Transdev’s Marketing and Communications Manager, to get some insight into how it won the award, and learn more about the company and its ‘ground-breaking’ project
Founded in 1924, The Burnley Bus Company has been providing transport for Burnley and Pendle for decades, and as Ben notes it is: “truly embedded within the town’s community.”
Over the years, the company has been through many changes, including 2017’s renovations and rebranding. [wlm_nonmember][…]
By subscribing you will benefit from:
- Operator & Supplier Profiles
- Face-to-Face Interviews
- Lastest News
- Test Drives and Reviews
- Legal Updates
- Route Focus
- Industry Insider Opinions
- Passenger Perspective
- Vehicle Launches
- and much more!
“Our two biggest brands, Mainline and the Witchway have seen sustained investment in new buses, new routes and new technology for our customers,” Ben elaborated.
Community spirit
Accompanying these changes was the introduction of the award-winning ‘Make my Mainline’ project. Part of this was an investment of over £4m which saw the introduction of 30 new buses.
“We wanted customers to feel that the bus was ‘their’ bus,” Ben said. “We are proudly part of the fabric of Burnley and Pendle, through and through.”
When I asked Ben to explain the motivation behind the research programme, and what it set out to achieve, he replied: “The idea was to create a far-reaching research programme which not only aimed to explore what customers wanted to see in their new buses, but to engage on a deeper level and gain meaningful insights into the way our customers travel, and what they think of our service delivery.”
The research was conducted through carrying out a survey, which was promoted on social media, via posters and on the company’s buses and bus stations.
“The survey was designed in a way to ensure that customers could offer their own thoughts and opinions, rather than be guided by what we thought they wanted to see,” Ben explained. “So we included free text fields with most questions, alongside a wide-ranging selection of questions such as: ‘What do you think buses will be like in the year 3,000?’”
Ben explained how the company had used the feedback it received to improve its services: “As well as offering feedback on our new buses, we also gained valuable insight into travel patterns.
Customers also told us they were confused by the destinations and numbering system on Mainline, so we simplified them – M1, M2, M3 and M4 – creating a network of four simple, easy-to-understand routes to sit alongside our existing operations in Burnley and Pendle.”
Ben noted how the company also incorporated passengers’ views into making changes to practical problems: “We listened to passengers’ views on more practical issues. For example during driver changeovers, customers were previously left standing out in the cold whilst a driver set themselves up in their bus. So, with Mainline, we outlined new service standards to our drivers to ensure that customers are boarded before any driver changeovers.”
I asked Ben whether the survey answers yielded any particularly unusual suggestions: “There were quite a few from on-board coffee machines to underwater nuclear-powered buses; customers had fun with their suggestions! Amongst the unusual ideas were some that did make it into production – including tables at seats and bigger bins.”
Considering the local community played such a huge part in shaping the project, I asked why it was so important for the company to utilise the community to generate ideas, and artwork. For example the suggestions of: fast and reliable WiFi, at-seat USB power points, brighter interior lighting, more legroom and luggage space, and also the introduction of the ‘voice of Mainline’ for which local radio DJ Dave Metcalfe and East Lancashire schoolgirl Emma Taylor were chosen from online auditions to deliver on-board audio announcements to customers.
“As mentioned,” Ben responded, “we are very connected to the town and community. We work in partnership with the town’s major stakeholders to promote bus travel. We work with Burnley FC and are now a member of its ‘football in the community’ arm in the club. We chose Burnley’s home ground, Turf Moor, as the location for a spectacular photoshoot to launch our new buses. To ensure maximum awareness of the partnership, we issued a press release with the club and regularly send out communications to their fans through social media. We also consider encouraging young people to engage and use the bus as vitally important to the future success of the business, working with the local authorities’ aims to lower future car ownership and reduce traffic congestion. We work in partnership with Burnley College and Nelson & Colne College, and as part of our partnership with the colleges we promote UGO, which allows young people under 19 to receive a third off their bus travel without the need for an extra pass.”
A holistic approach
Ben described the project as holistic, incorporating a range of elements, including staff engagement and training. The company introduced a series of team talks for the Mainline driving team.
“With the team talks, colleagues from across the business came together to discuss best practice in operations, engineering, marketing and service delivery,” explained Ben.
“As part of our CPC training courses we place a particular importance in customer service to ensure the driving team in Burnley provide the best care, first time, every time.”
Speaking about the new interactive CPC courses, Ben said: “They include a spell of supervised driving, and this has shown with a reduction in the number of accidents across the company.”
Another part of the Mainline investment was relocating the customer services team from the outskirts of Burnley to a customer-facing office at the heart of Burnley’s bus station, as well creating a new training package for drivers.
“Part of the training package included a handbook called ‘Why we are Pride of the North,’ outlining our expected service delivery standards, whilst empowering our teams at the same time. For instance, our drivers ensure that each and every customer, regardless of their age or mobility are seated before moving away from stops – even when they’re running late. We take the time to apologise to customers if we’re running late.”
Ground-breaking
Many have deemed the project as ‘ground-breaking.’ I asked Ben what he thinks sets this project apart from others.
“Never before has a survey touched on so many bases and asked so many questions of customers,” he said.
“In total, 147 people responded to the survey, which far exceeded our target of 100 responses. Of these, 76.2% were already regular Mainline users, meaning that we had a good sample of real customers from who we gained insight.”
Considering the rapid evolution of social media, and its huge influence on trends and public opinion, I asked Ben how important social media had been to The Burnley Bus Company in this project and how it had been harnessed to improve the company’s services.
“We pride ourselves on our social media availability, and on putting things right when they go wrong. We don’t try to bury our heads in the sand – we actively invite feedback, with questions answered over Twitter and Facebook 24/7, long opening hours for our telephone lines and dedicated teams to answer emails.
“With Make my Mainline, we introduced our ‘Happy Travels’ guarantee. If a customer is not happy with their journey for any reason, they can simply drop us a call, email or tweet, and we’ll post out a free voucher for a Daytripper Plus, no questions asked. We’ve publicised this offer both on the backs of our timetables and on the coves inside the buses themselves – and so far, we’ve had over 4,000 vouchers distributed.”
The company has also empowered drivers to act on customer feedback at the point of delivery, rather than simply providing contact details for the customer to call up at a later date. The Mainline buses are also not fitted with assault screens, in order to ensure that the customers feel as close to the driver as possible.
Hard-work rewarded
After successfully creating such a passenger-friendly service that integrates the needs of the community with its business aims, I asked Ben how it felt for The Burnley Bus Company to win Gold at the UK Bus Awards in the ‘Putting Passengers First’ category, he responded: “Fantastic! Winning gold was a reflection of the dedication and hard work our team have put into ensuring that our customers’ needs are well and truly exceeded.”
Ben explained that the project had also been well received by passengers: “We have had excellent feedback since Make my Mainline and the launch of the new buses. We regularly run customer surveys on board, we listen through social media and we actively seek our customers’ opinions on where they think we can improve. Our next round of improvements for Mainline will be delivered this year, and we’re about to launch another round of customer research to support this.”
Reflecting on the operator’s display of innovation in terms of utilising customer feedback, I asked Ben for his thoughts on the future of the industry, and how The Burnley Bus Company would further impact change: “We pride ourselves on being at the forefront of innovation” said Ben, “our zero-emission, opportunity-charging electric buses in Harrogate are an indication of where we think the industry is heading. If there is an opportunity to pioneer new technology, we will be leading the pack, as demonstrated in our upcoming rollout of ‘touch-on, touch-off’ ticketing technology across Yorkshire in partnership with Transport for the North.”
