GWR

Covering core touchpoints through an ‘always-on’ programme

The Challenge

To develop a customer survey that would complement other existing Rail CX work (e.g. the National Rail Passenger Survey) but that would also provide GWR with insight, at a granular level, about each individual customer touchpoint.

Allowing GWR to focus investment on areas that would impact the customer experience and drive revenue gains through additional spend/increased modal choice decisions.

Our approach

Savanta worked in close consultation with the client to devise a diagram of the customer journey and then created a questionnaire that examined the experience of passengers at each touchpoint.

An on-train survey was then conducted covering a representative sample of services across the GWR route (covering all routes/branch lines etc).

The continuous survey was conducted in the first two weeks of every four-week rail period (with 13 periods per year) to provide a sample of c1,500 passenger interviews per period and 20,000 interviews per annum.

The outcome

Savanta have conducted this research continuously for First Great Western/ GWR since 2006.

Throughout this period the customer journey has been regularly reviewed (through a mix of qualitative and quantitative techniques) to ensure the survey is recording attitudes towards those experiential aspects of each touchpoint that really matter to customers.

This has led to improvements from web and app access, at station ticket purchasing to the on-train environment and staff training programmes.