Plusdial provided mobile ticketing service on a turn-key basis to Helsinki City Transport. The following events have been significant from the viewpoint of the project and mobile ticketing service:
· 2000 Development of the idea
· 2001 Development project with Helsinki City Transport
· Sep 2001 the first mobile ticket in the world was sold during the International Car Free Day.
· Jan 2002 the pilot was started in Helsinki covering metro and trams
· In 2005 alone over 2.5 million mobile tickets, exceeding the sales goal set for 2005 by 8%.
· 2002 & 2003 & 2004 The best SMS service in Finland
· Nov 2004 service was expanded to buses, commuter trains and nightticket was taken in use
· Total of over 11.000.000 mobile tickets sold reached in July 2007 · Plusdial won together with Ericsson HRT tender to provide the service in Helsinki region April 2012
Based on the technical solutions and service concept developed in Helsinki Plusdial is able to offer a product-like solution for public transport companies, meaning that the implementation can be carried out very quickly.
Usually this takes only a couple of months, finishing in shorter time than what is usually needed in simultaneous training of various transport company’s personnel groups according to their normal training cycles.
The service has proven to be very reliable. Since the latest major software version update and installation since Nov 22, 2005, the continuous uptime of the service (i.e. availability) was full 100%, excluding naturally the telecommunication operators’ connection breaks out of Plusdial’s control and the few planned maintenance breaks, taking usually only minutes during slow traffic hours.
The technical support of the service was based on 24/7 principle.
Majority of e.g. connection breaks are detected by automatic monitoring and alarming features of the system, allowing the support to take actions before any customer feedback is received.
According to Helsinki City Transport evaluations they made over EUR 1 Million extra profit in 2005 because of mobile ticketing being a popular, easy to use and always available ticketing option.
Customer survey results
Yearly surveys have been carried out by the Helsinki City Transport among the mobile ticketing customers. The objective was to find out the demographical profiles of the consumers, the utilization frequency and user friendliness of the service, information in which vehicles the service was used, which travelling and ticketing options this service substituted (if any), to get open feedback from the users and to receive other relevant information to base the marketing and further development of the system on.
The key results (N=700) of the surveys were the following:
· Average age of the customers - 30 years
· Age distribution 14 - 66 years
· All the age groups were represented
· Sex of customers: female 46% and male 54%
· 10% of the customers used the service for the first time
· 50% of the customers used the service every week
· 40% would have travelled by other means or without a ticket if the mobile option was not available
· In open feedback 92% of the passengers considered the service to be excellent and very user friendly.
· Expanding the service to cover commuter trains and buses was hoped for
Back |
