Netskrt Systems
This article first appeared in the Railway-News Magazine Issue 1 2022.
It is not news that customer experience plays a dominant role across industries and can be an important determiner of the success or failure of products or services.
In the highly competitive and technologically driven world, many industries are experimenting with multiple platforms with an ambition to offer exceptional services to their customers.
A similar trend can be witnessed in the railway industry which is expanding its service offerings to meet the emerging demands of its customers and deliver a memorable passenger travel experience. The players operating in the space are required to adopt a passenger-first approach, in order to emerge successfully during these challenging times.
Unveiling the New Aspect of ‘Customer Experience’
The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted us all in one way or another. With people restricted to their homes during the lockdown, we have adopted several habits that are here to stay for the long term. The successful implementation of work-from-home culture has allowed people to reduce their commute time and use it to indulge in their favourite pastimes like outdoor activities, fitness, individual hobbies and so on.
Besides, owing to recent lockdowns, there has been a tremendous surge in video streaming/viewing. Recent research revealed that among all over-the-top (OTT) capable homes, streaming video accounted for 25% of the total television viewing minutes in 2020, up from 19% in the fourth quarter of 2019. The cumulative weekly time spent on streaming video in the second quarter was 142.5 billion minutes, an increase of a whopping 75% from the 81.7 billion minutes recorded during the second quarter in 2019. The stats hold
a validation to what defines the emerging needs of the consumers today.
Even though people indulge in various activities while being online, video streaming occupies a major chunk of that time. Due to the soaring demand in video consumption, expecting a steady internet connection on-the-go for uninterrupted video viewing is not too much to ask for. Therefore, for railway companies/operators, the need to improve their existing infrastructure to provide better internet connectivity and enhance the overall customer experience has become even more critical.
