Our long-term client Northern, the second largest train operator in the UK, has seen the biggest improvement in customer service satisfaction in the rail industry - with a third consecutive rise in customer scores according to the national industry body, The Institute of Customer Service (2022).
In this case study, we will open more specifically about what the challenge was and how Hellon’s design approach set the Northern Star and chose the right tools to navigate towards measured success.
Northern, the second biggest Railway operator in England, connects over 250,000 people every day. At the peak of customer usage, Northern had the lowest customer satisfaction score of -43,9 among all the UK rail providers year on year in 2020.
In 2020, they set out on a mission to become more customer-centric organization, creating a positive impact for the North in all they do and serve.
Their transformation started by challenging their revenue-first approach to measure their success through their customers’ eyes by setting the improvement of their Net Promoter Score (NPS) as the priority target. To set their new direction, they partnered with Hellon.
“Hellon’s diverse team has an outstanding track record enabling organizational change with a human-to-human and planet-centric approach.”
During the partnership, future rail trends and customer insight-based end-to-end journey improvements were identified.
At the core was an integrated inclusion approach, which was highlighted with customers recruited to the research and concept testing phases. Extra efforts were made to engage customers with different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds as well as visible and non-visible disabilities, including neurodiversity and sensory impairments. This ensured the direction and improvements were not just steered by the average customer's needs and that the future travel experience rail is accessible for all.
With Hellon’s signature collaborative co-creation workshops, a customer need-based future vision was co-created. The identified customer bottlenecks and pain points within the current end-to-end journey informed the creation of 5 concepts comprising multiple service innovations across the customer journey.
The concepts formed the 'Northern Star', a future strategy that would inform Northern’s business planning in the next decade to steer all efforts towards what is important to Northern’s customers.
"Throughout the tender process, Hellon went above and beyond the requirements. They created a bespoke approach to us, and it felt like they really understood Northern, the operations, the complexities of our business model and they really took that into consideration.
They came back with an approach that was both adaptable and flexible. What we wanted to ensure is that we had trust in our partner, and that was there right from the beginning and that continued throughout the programme. It's really rare to get that. And there was evidence throughout the programme, where Hellon went over and above as a partner."
- Tracy Barr, Head of Customer Experience, Northern Trains Ltd
”Service design's approach and tools have supported us in shifting our culture toward increased customer-centricity. Hellon has been a tremendous support in the last 18 months, guiding us through this process.”
To distil all gathered customer insight and support Northern in reaching its short- and long-term goals, the project resulted in a CX Repository to support Northern in focusing on the right things.
The Toolkit includes tools for customer journey mapping, customer engagement principles, behavioural archetypes and personas, as well as a Customer Experience measurement framework. These were socialised across the whole organisation and are used in frontline staff training.
"Right from the start of our customer transformation journey, the team from Hellon have guided us, deploying their experience and capabilities from across multiple industries to understand our customer needs, identify where we can become more customer centric and provide a toolkit of design solutions to prioritise our activity where it truly matters to our customers.
The relationship has been very collaborative, with Hellon guiding us through the journey, helping us to develop our own enduring capability and leaving a lasting legacy that we have continued to build and take forward."
- Mark Powles, Commercial & Customer Director, Northern Trains Ltd
"The relationship has been very collaborative, with Hellon guiding us through the journey, helping us to develop our own enduring capability and leaving a lasting legacy that we have continued to build and take forward."
Northern is already witnessing the benefits of the collaboration, measured through their customers' eyes. Northern achieved recognition from YouGov in 2023 for being in the top 10 most-improved companies in the UK.
Northern has seen the biggest improvement in customer service satisfaction in the rail industry - with a third consecutive rise in customer scores, according to the national industry body, The Institute of Customer Service.
Northern and Hellon were also rewarded in the prestigious Forum Social Awards Innovation and Transformation category with the Inclusion Award for the collaboration that enforced equity in March 2023.
"There was a planned engineering this summer, which would provide huge disruption to our customers. The team worked using the tools with the frontline teams that were responsible for providing customer service and information during this planned disruption.
This led to an improvement in NPS of +20, which was measured throughout the disruption piece. We were able to demonstrate the value straight away back to the business."
- Tracy Barr, Head of Customer Experience, Northern Trains Ltd
The work continues to support Northern in improving its CX internally. Their success with their Service Design approach and toolkit are also inspiring and informing others to follow suit, from LNER and South West Trains to outside industry player British Gas.
"We were able to demonstrate the value straight away back to the business."
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