London Midland, along with partners VCCP, Whoosh Media and Icomera, have picked up two awards at the national Customer Experience Awards 2017. After a bumper year for innovation, the train operating company’s industry-leading Wi-Fi service and entertainment project, Motion, was awarded first place in the Digital Customer Experience Innovation category. It also achieved a silver award in the Hospitality, Leisure and Travel category.
London Midland’s submission centred on Motion, a free on-board entertainment system which allows customers to access Hollywood movies, TV shows, books and games directly via their mobile devices, without the need to download an external app.
Motion was developed from customer insight gained from London Midland Labs, a principle pillar of the company’s ‘Simply Better Journeys’ vision. Labs is a start-up incubator based at Aston University in the heart of Birmingham, and a first in the rail industry. Improving customer experience is the sole focus of the initiative.
Wi-Fi provision was identified as an unmet need and in the rail industry is often expensive and inconsistent. London Midland decided to really lead the market offering free on board entertainment and free Wifi for all passengers.
Working in tandem with the Motion platform is London Midland’s free on-board Wi-Fi service, which enables passengers to surf the internet over fast and reliable connections at speeds unrivalled across the industry. Customer response to both Motion and Wi-Fi has been significant and in the first month since rollout, the service was accessed by more than 400,000 users. The free Motion, Wi-Fi and entertainment is now available on 55 million passenger journeys.
Ian McLaren, finance and contracts director at London Midland, said:
“We’ve worked incredibly hard over the past 12 months to bring forward a free Wi-Fi and entertainment system unique not only to the rail industry, but the travel and leisure sector as a whole. We weren’t satisfied with only providing Wi-Fi on our fleet and when the opportunity arose to go above and beyond customer expectations and implement the Motion entertainment package, we embraced the challenge. An overwhelmingly positive customer response confirms we made the right choice.
“Winning these two national awards for our work is really the icing on the cake after a fantastic year at London Midland and our customers have been at the heart of all that we’ve achieved. The Wi-Fi and Motion project was ambitious but we met and exceeded our goals throughout, aided by VCCP, Whoosh Media and Icomera, who all proved invaluable.
“Everyone who has had a part in this project should feel incredibly proud of our success. London Midland has set a high benchmark for the industry that will be very hard to beat.”
