Not Just for the Major Players – Now Operators of All Sizes Can Benefit from Mobile Ticketing

Story by Ashley Murdoch, Corethree CEO, published in Local Transport Today 7th March issue.

Thanks to the ubiquitousness of smartphones – which are really small mobile computers – consumers are used to being able to access a huge number of services at their very fingertips, anytime, any place. As part of this, the rise of mobile ticketing has gone from strength to strength. After all, why search for the correct change or travel pass, when you are probably already looking at your phone whilst waiting for your bus or train to arrive? If your ticket is already on your phone, then all you need do is hop aboard and go.

The benefits almost speak for themselves: purchasing paper tickets at a machine or buying online and having to print out at home is slow, cumbersome and much more likely to lead to lost tickets, missed journeys, congestion in ticket halls and a lot of accompanying stress. Of course, all this is exacerbated during peak times such as rush hour, weekends, and the holiday season. From the perspective of the transport operator, what’s important about tickets is how quickly they sell and how easily they are managed. The aim is to provide passengers with the best possible service by enabling queues to move faster, boarding times to be smooth and for customer information to be delivered in a timely and effective way. M-ticketing delivers in all these areas and more.

“M-tickets provide the transport operator with total visibility into the whole lifecycle of the ticket, from purchase and distribution to activation.” - Corethree CEO, Ashley Murdoch.

Protection for operators and passengers
For security, the best m-ticket technology providers will never share a webpage URL that can be copied or shared, giving fraudsters a free ticket to ride. When m-tickets are natively generated and digitally encrypted within either the iOS or Android mobile operating system and indelibly linked to the account holder, all the stakeholders are protected from the transport operator through to the mobile operator and the end-user passenger. This means there is no loss of sales revenue through ticket duplication or reselling, it is cost-effective to cancel, amend or swop them out (and scale up or down) and if a passenger loses or drops their phone, the m-ticket can easily be reproduced.

M-tickets provide the transport operator with total visibility into the whole lifecycle of the ticket from purchase, distribution and activation. Each ticket can be validated, and its journey tracked. Even tickets bought for others remain visible as this is done by ‘gifting’ and assigning the mobile tickets to named individuals via the app.

The value of data
Data is the underlying asset when it comes to mobile ticketing apps. The data on passenger numbers, ages, requirements, journeys (and more) that m-tickets can provide to transport operators allows them to benefit from data-driven insights, which can be used to help optimise strategy and contingency planning resulting in improved services, greener operations and reduced costs.

Beyond this, data can also be used to provide unrivalled insights into customer behaviour and preferences. With an m-ticket mobile app acting as a direct and immediate communication channel between the transport operator and the travelling consumer, it is possible to further enhance the customer experience by sharing real-time arrival and departure information, and more, direct to passengers’ mobile devices.

Although primarily in the business of transporting people from A to B, operators wanting to improve the quality of their services don’t have to stop at live journey updates. By partnering with a mobile data manipulation specialist with a proven track record in m-ticketing at scale, transport operators can even do deals with other retailers or service providers to offer each passenger an array of live, dynamic and valuable services and personalised rewards directly from the mobile app. When operators know who their individual customers are and what each of them wants, then with the right mobile technology partner providing dynamic data analytics and the ability to push proactive responses and rewards, the business of getting people from A to B expands into the business of giving passengers the best experience possible.

Not just for the big boys
If all this sounds great but out of reach for anyone but the largest transport operators, think again. Recently launched, tailored solutions are now available that enable operators of any size to easily start benefitting from m-ticketing. Within just a few weeks it’s possible to get up and running with m-ticketing – under an operator’s own brand – and offer passengers a convenient and modern mobile experience.

There are some great deals around at the moment – some with no upfront cost and further along the line only a revenue-share model with a minimum monthly fee. Look for fixed-feature solutions that have been designed by an experienced m-ticketing provider as only a provider with long-term and extensive knowledge of the industry will know all the essential features that must be included for success. To take advantage of the mobile-data opportunity, you’ll want to have data-driven service optimisation and mobile marketing opportunities, plus easy to activate add-on features for when you’re ready to scale.

The mobile-data revolution is going to be paramount for decades to come, so transport operators of all sizes need to be able to reap the rewards of being able to deliver an improved customer experience and a data-driven mobile marketing strategy. There may be bespoke, high-end solutions out there but today there are also more tailored products available so any sized operator can offer a more efficient and connected customer experience to its passengers. When done properly with a tried-and-tested mobile ticketing provider with proven expertise, operators can achieve much more than faster sales and decreased boarding times, although these are a pretty important place to start.