Riding along with rail customers
Filming journeys from station entrance to destination for one of the UK’s largest train operators, to find and fix pain points.
Our principles for ethnography
We’ve run in-home and on-site ethnographies for clients in retail, tech and travel. The subject matter differs, but our approach rests on consistent principles:
- Develop solutions, don’t just identify problems
- Capture feedback in the moment
- Understand not just what customers want to see, but how they want to feel
- Provide a framework for understanding customer needs and the customer ideal, and audit the experience against it
- Give clear, impactful feedback the client can act on
The challenge
One of the UK’s largest train operators asked us to understand customer needs across the whole journey, capturing every pain point from the moment people entered the station to the moment they reached their destination.
We recommended creating a video report that could be shared with frontline staff, showing pain points as they happened and bringing to life how much difference potential fixes would make.
Our approach
Depth interviews, video diaries and accompanied journeys (with a camera crew in tow) allowed us to:
- Build an in-depth framework of customer priorities, needs and frustrations
- Let customers notice and record frustrations live, as they went about an ordinary journey
- Film those moments as they happened, and interview people about what could be better
By the end of the project we had explored customer frustrations in detail, and had a polished film capturing those moments, making our recommendations all the more impactful.
The strategy
The project identified five key needs common to all customer types:
- Predictability: arrival times you can depend on
- Flow: being able to intuit each stage of the journey
- An empowering environment: space to relax, work or socialise
- Care and consideration: from staff and other passengers
- Safety: on trains and in stations
With the needs understood, we audited the customer experience against them and recommended improvements:
- More nuanced staff roles: troubleshooters, etiquette enforcers, ambassadors and updaters
- Better technology: improved ticket machines and information boards
- Better Wi-Fi: to meet work and social needs
- Improved safety: visible staff presence and reassurance
This gave the operator a clear hit list of fixes to target and prioritise.
