The first meeting went very well, a motivated group of students from the Netherlands and abroad made a nice mix and the outlook was promising. We did not however decide on a subject yet. But traveling from the university to home, with again a delay, triggered me to propose to work with something we all use everyday: public transport.
After contacting multiple public transport companies in the Netherlands, the company Qbuzz approached us and agreed on an interview with two of their employees at the company HQ in Amersfoort. The interview, provided a preliminary point of understanding the interesting, yet challenging business environment Qbuzz operates in. To complement what we learned in the interview, we conducted secondary research collecting data from various websites, journals and articles. In addition to this, we analyzed the social media of Qbuzz and its competitors, to find out what customers say and feel about the bus operators.
Based on the research, we detected that the company had a great number of complaints specifically about service quality. Among the complaints in both social media channels three main problems could be identified: issues with bus drivers, buses arriving late and buses arriving too early. The problems have added up as can be seen in the public star rating system of Qbuzz Facebook page.
What Qbuzz is doing quite well on the social media channels is responding to the complaints, customer needs and suggestions in a timely manner, usually within the same day. It was surprising to see a non-technology company feeling so comfortable about the way they handle customer service in social media channels. However, it remains unclear how the company uses customer feedback on a daily basis to improve quality or solve the actual problems. Additionally, in our interview it turned out that information does not flow as smoothly as expected between the different IT-systems across the company departments, but the company is working on a central database. The current IT systems are rather decentralized in nature, so it is problematic especially for marketing and customer service. They can’t get information about the buses in real-time to immediately respond and inform customers of current status and delays, before the problem has occurred.
The proposed solution we offerd: The Qbuzz app. The development and implementation of a mobile application with a real-time interactive map, travel planner and bus schedules would definitely be a significant investment for Qbuzz. But will pay off due to the enhanced quality it proves to users.
Smartphone usage is quickly growing in the Netherlands and according to research done by GfK Netherlands, 80% of the population accesses the internet through smartphones (emarketer.com, 2015). The market potential for Qbuzz App is promising with the digitally savvy crowd in Netherlands. We recommend the application to be developed to work on Android, iOS and Windows Phone operating systems.
There are several key implementation issues and potential risks Qbuzz faces with the new technology. On the implementation side it might take longer for the app to be developed and launched than initially planned. For example, getting the app approved for iOS can take longer than for Android. Qbuzz has a large diversity of IT-systems and the proposed technology requires more integration of the different information systems than previously. Qbuzz would have to hire additional staff specialized in mobile technology to the IT-department, since current staff does not necessarily have the required skills to solve issues with the new tech. But we think that they can pull it off.
