We’re just about booking? Says who?
While helping consumers book their seats in the easiest way possible is the core of Redbus, we strive to ensure the seamless experience does not stop there. We wanted to take away all the hurdles faced by travelers from boarding all the way to getting off at their desired destination.
The 3 primary things we wanted to solve within the boarding experience were:
- Where is my exact boarding location?
- How far is my bus from my boarding location?
- Is my bus on time?
Where is my exact boarding location?
While the general location is mentioned with every bus ticket, the precision was absent. To be able to pinpoint the exact location where the user’s bus will be stopping we used the large volumes of historical data that exists within our system. Merely mentioning a landmark is not enough sometimes since the customer might not be able to understand which side of the road they are supposed to be on. To tackle this we now show a map extract with the direction from which the bus will be approaching.
How far is my bus from my boarding location?
To solve this, we started sharing the live tracking location of the bus on the app. This gets initiated an hour before the journey so that the customer can stay updated about the progress without having to call the operator or the bus staff. Traditionally the customer was completely dependent on driver/conductor interaction via phone to know where the bus was. The availability of even the phone number would be dependent on the operator. To avoid all these instances of bad experience, we have made the app the primary point of contact for all live tracking information.
Is my bus on time?
The biggest challenge with respect to tracking if the bus is running on time, is the fact that there are several boarding points that which each have their own scheduled times. So, we need to track not only where the bus is, but also when it has crossed the last boarding point. The problem with GPS devices being used today is that the GPS signals are not consistent and not frequent enough. Due to this, a bus might have crossed a boarding point but we would not know of the precise time if it falls between two packets of gps data that is received. To counter this, we now observe the movement pattern to be able to determine the exact time of bus reaching a boarding point. We send SMS to customer with an update about the running time or delays.
From a tech standpoint, we are changing systems to support scale. Traditionally this is all built on php, and since we are scaling very fast we use dynamic cron that gets updated in real time. We are in the process of transitioning into event based systems now, using GO and Kafka
Improve boarding experience while reducing load on customer support.
Traditionally all the queries regarding pickup location and running status would be handled by customer support. Ever since all these experience improvements have been implemented at the app level, we have observed a significant drop of about 60% in volume of calls going to the helpline for information.
Bus operator benefits too!
Thanks to the live tracking system, even operators have access to a Bus ETA screen on their dashboard which helps operator reps at outlets answer customer enquiries offline.
We are also in the process of advising some operators to move their listed timings for certain stops if there is a trend of the buses being late. This helps in correct expectation setting which in turn improves customer experience and the feedback/rating the operator gets.
Beyond Boarding
We are not stopping at improving just the boarding experience. One common pain point for customers was waking up on time to get off the bus, especially for longer journeys where destination arrival was at odd hours. We use the live tracking system here again, paired with the information about the customer’s destination. Thanks to this new feature, customers get a wakeup call 5–10 mins prior to arriving at their destination.
redBus isn’t in the ticketing business, we are in the ‘journey management’ and ‘experience’ business. I guess thats what drives the level of customer centricity that pervades our organization. The benefit — there is never a dull moment here, one is constantly pushed to challenge the status quo
