Migrating smoothly from an existing mobile app provider

This article shares our approach to onboarding a new operator into the Passenger ecosystem. It talks about some of the ways we make sure that all active customers, and their tickets, are moved over smoothly to Passenger Cloud, the mobile ticketing app management system that’s behind 11 of the top-rated transport apps in the UK right now – according to Passenger Transport magazine.

In life, when things aren’t going right, it’s in our nature and usually a lot easier to put off making a change than to make difficult decisions. You know the ones. The ones that might mean you have to face up and admit you didn’t make the right choices the first time around.

When it comes to a lot of buying decisions, it can be difficult to pick the right path. Especially when there are plenty of choices that, on the surface, all look the same. You do your research, check out product reviews, speak to your friends or colleagues and then once you’ve worked out which brand to go for, you try and find the best price you can.

It’s no different when you’re tasked with finding software to solve a problem. There are a number of reasons you might want to switch providers, and we understand that it’s no small decision to make. After all, there’s plenty of things that could go wrong – you’re migrating an entire ticketing system after all. Hundreds, in many cases thousands, of valued customers are part way through an active ticket at any given time. How on earth do you make such a fundamental change without upsetting the apple cart and creating a customer service nightmare?! Well, choosing the right partner is key.

We’ve completed successful migrations from other mobile app ticketing providers for a number of customers, including complicated multi-app scenarios. For example, Transdev, who operate services across the Transport for the North region under a number of different brands, had two apps that needed to be migrated into a single new Passenger-powered app. Working in tandem, the app ‘upgrade’ went to plan and Transdev Go, as it was dubbed, is now riding high in the app stores.

Each time the process got smoother, making it easier for our team to do a great job on your behalf. Our migration planning has been tried and tested, which we hope gives you the confidence to choose Passenger if you’re considering a change.

When the Passenger team migrated Reading Buses into the Passenger system in 2018, working with former CEO Martijn Gilbert, the apps went from an average of 2 stars on the app store to 4.8 stars in just over 9 months. An astonishing increase in customer satisfaction in a relatively short space of time.

Some outgoing suppliers are cooperative, some are less so. Our migration plans are designed specifically not to rely on cooperation from your existing supplier, so the changes happen without risky third-party dependencies. As long as you’re able to provide user and ticket data we can automate and manage the migration process on your behalf.

Our expertise and approach ensure that active customer tickets, in whatever state; purchased, active, gifted or part-used carnets can be ported to Passenger Cloud ready for your customers to use again in the new app with a minimum of hassle when they need to travel. We’ll walk you through a detailed communication plan, so that your marketing team, customer service team and social media staff know exactly what they need to do in the run-up to the changeover, on the day and over the first few days and weeks of the new system.

We’ll work with you to map out the differences between the existing app and what it will become, helping you to make the switch as easy as possible for customers. We’ll highlight common scenarios in which they’ll find themselves and what this might mean for their journeys. This will inform your customer support and driver awareness strategy so that there are no surprises for your staff when you make the switch.

We have three main approaches that you can take, too. These are what we call our ‘Three Core Migration Options’. These approaches focus on balancing the revenue risk of having more than one app system in place at the same time, with the customer experience of adopting and using tickets in a new app. We call these “Revenue risk, happy customer”, “Reputational risk, revenue protection” and “Product Phasing”. As part of migration planning, we’ll explain the pros and cons in detail so that you can decide which route is best for you.

Whichever way you choose to go, by following the agreed plan closely we will help to minimise both revenue risk and reputational risk. This provides the best of both worlds and will get you off to a flying start with Passenger, where you can take advantage of the benefits of a simpler, more reliable app user experience, easier customer support tools and powerful network information.

If you’d like to learn more about how Passenger can help you to deliver a top-rated customer experience on mobile, please get in touch.