Making Passenger
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Making Passenger
James Carney: Death of the Dolly Mixtures
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James Carney, Finance & Commercial Director of Blackpool Transport joins Tom and Matt to talk about how Blackpool is continuing to make buses the first choice for its residents and visitors by being there with the 'wow'.
Habit change, the power of the penny and insight into Blackpool Transport's future plans for becoming a centre of excellence for electric vehicles are discussed - and some 'third glass of chablis conversations' are fondly reminisced on!
Hi, welcome to the Making Passenger podcast. I'm Matt.
Tom :And I'm Tom.
Matt :This week we'll be sitting down with James Carney, Finance and Commercial Director of Blackpool Transport.
Tom :James and his team have seen incredible growth over the last five years. So we wanted to find out why. And find out how they're planning to bring people back to the buses once locked down easy, and it's safe to travel again.
Matt :Hope you enjoy! James, thank you very much for joining us today. I really appreciate you taking the time out to come have a chat with me and Tom, obviously want to chat about a few things at the moment. But I mean, my first question for you is how are things going your end? How is lockdown? Where are you working from at the minute?
James :Like a lot of people I'm sharing my time between working at the office and working from home. We've got a policy of rotation within the office area to minimise You know, the problems that come from social contact, but you'd appreciate we're an operational organisation. And there are innumerable questions that bubble up from the ground level that needs to be addressed quickly by somebody on site. So I've got two very able colleagues, Managing Director Jane Cole and Sally Shaw, Director of Stakeholders. And you know, we work a regime. So there's always somebody here.
Matt :Yeah, that's great. I mean, you can't really drive a bus from home. So I appreciate that some people actually need to go into an office or whatever that office looks like. So we've asked you to join us today. And there's a number of topics we want to talk about. But the first thing I want to talk to you about is really just what could you summarise Blackpool's success and reinvention over the last five years I know that you guys, you've invested quite a lot and you've had some really big success stories there. And I wonder if you could just maybe give us an overview of what you guys have been working on and how that panned out.
James :Okay, yes, pleasure. Our strategy starts with the idea that we offer a customer, a highly pleasurable experience when they travel with us. I'm pleased to say that we seem to be succeeding in that objective 60% of the customers in Transport Focus's survey in 2019 said they were very satisfied with what we do. And that was a record for Blackboard Transport. We go to the particular about the buses that you mentioned, we always make sure that each batch has a new feature that raises the comfort level that keeps the public interested in what we're offering. And I personally have been wedded to the idea that it's the quality of employee that you have, that actually makes the value of the investment come through, and we rank staff as an equal priority to customers. And that's enabled us to become an employer of choice in Blackpool, and thereby equip staff with the skills they need to respond to customer needs. It's a very simple formula. It takes a lot of time and patience to plan and execute.
Matt :Yeah, I think you've made it sound simple, but I doubt it is at all. I mean, you you suggest that the key factor in your success is your investment in people, is it?.
James :Yes. Yeah. The bus industry has frequently treated staff as being interchangeable, almost a commodity. But if you want, if you want people to deliver a good service, they have to know that their employer respects them and treats them as individuals. That's where the time comes. And it also takes a great deal of insight into employee personality.
Matt :Yeah, I'm sure it does. And so how do you guys work to feed that back and train your team and staff? How do you invest in your team?
James :Okay, if we start with you, mate, you have to make sure your terms and conditions, your remuneration packages, you know, the basic stuff, you know, the, the first three levels or Hertzberg pyramid has to be right. But that's just the platform. I think your next steps have got to be to give people the tools, the equipment, the training, yeah. And then you somehow work out towards what your goals and with us you're going to reach those goals. And if you can read if you can get to that sweet spot up, you know, three quarters away up the pyramid, then actually you get back now many more times to the value that you've invested. Yeah,
Matt :Absolutely. I think in our own way we we've seen that in our in our own business and the investing in people - just the the return on that investment can can be amazing. You mentioned the Hertzberg Pyramid there. Could you maybe just break that down? I mean, obviously I know what that is. Obviously, I know that there'll be some people that don't know what that is. So could you just break that down?
James :Oh, what a pity you should ask so openly! But the point is at the bottom, if we're talking about the primary needs of an employee, it's food, shelter, a warm and dry place to to work. Yeah. And those and, and believe me in a business where so many assets were in 2015, just a half a step away from being time expired, making the change into having a fleet whose average age is 2.7 years old, is a transformation. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I've always believed that if you are asking staff to work with equipment which is at the end of its useful life, you really are, you should be embarrassed because they will feel that you are not treating them seriously. Because you're not giving them the tools to do the job properly.
Tom :It really sounds like Blackpool have invested in the people and that is incredibly refreshing to hear things. I'm seeing a lot of articles in the in the press at the moment and, you know, with a particular focus on the frontline staff that are driving, you know, the routes and, and the gratitude that a lot of people have for for the people doing those jobs. It sounds, it feels to me that perhaps there's a there's a kind of a refreshed, you know, gratitude for for people in those roles, you know, across the board not only in, in transport, perhaps perhaps in the in the NHS where previously some of those roles weren't as, you know, high profile or as well renumeration, as perhaps they should have been, I was half expecting you to start by talking about, you know, the new vehicles and sort of going to town on on how they were much better than perhaps the previous previous ones you started with the people. And that's very, very similar to kind of how I think, you know, Passenger as a business works as well.
James :I mean, if we just talk about the vehicles for a moment because I don't want to underplay them. You know, they are, they are beautiful pieces of kit. But, but that's one of the things we're going to talk about, at some point is how do you select suppliers? And it's really important to me that price is not the dominant factor, that it becomes a relationship with a supplier that you don't, you're looking for not just today's purchase, what are you going to get out of the next iteration? And what support do you get to get greater value for money than you ever thought possible for what you've just purchased? So just like I talked about, you need to surprise your customer with the next, the next innovation, the next comfort level that has to happen from your suppliers as well. Yeah, and the industry is extremely good at knowing the price, but too little of the value of purchases.
Tom :I think that's a really interesting point as a supplier to the industry, I think I think you're absolutely right. I think most most applies to most industries would probably say that, I guess the challenge there is how do you get the industry you know, as a representative of an organisation that's, that's doing really well within that space that you know, the bus market, how do you share that knowledge across other bus companies? How do you encourage them to see the value in the same way that you are?
James :Partly through the network of operators who are members of organisations like ALBUM?
Tom :Yep.
James :Yeah. And, you know, broadly, ALBUM is a is a membership of independent operators. So we don't have any fears about competition, sharing good practices about well, if you have a career in the bus industry, what you learn from others, you prepare to recycle to the to the next person you meet. That's one way. And then the other way is I encourage our suppliers to tell their prospective customers what the relationship is with Blackpool Transport. Because if you can portray yourself as being offering added value, being creative, we don't know what we're going to produce tomorrow, but it'll be something you'll want. Look, we've been doing that for for four years with Blackpool Transport. That's a good way to go forward.
Matt :So we've talked a bit about the successes over the last five years. Was there anything that you didn't the along the way lessons learned anything that fell by the wayside, anything that you know, pearls of wisdom to give to other people and say, This is what we did- And this is what we did badly and we've learned from that.
James :Okay, well, I just be talking about what is wisdom, and actually it's for me, it's where it's knowledge that used beyond the context that you derived it from. So it's the idea of looking for the wider dimension of the information you've got. But we when we designed the strategy, we knew it had to last, when things go well, when things are not so good. And the COVID-19 medical emergencies a really good example of a trading environment, not even considered when we put the strategy together. So we we have round about 17% of the number of customers travelling with the Blackpool Transport bus service. Now, as we did in, say mid March, was quite a lot compared to many other bus operators. And we've done some analysis we know if you're buying a ticket from us, what time of day you're travelling. If you are using a now card, what time of day you're travelling, and we're able to work out if you've got an NHS pass so we can carry for free those customers, what time of day you're travelling. And you won't be surprised to hear that, that you know, those essential workers are travelling at the shoulders of the day. We've got some boarding our buses at 5am and getting off them at after 11 o'clock at night. Now, we set out to have a key workers network during the crisis, because it was right at the heart of our values that we serve the town and the town, is, the town's need at this time, was all about health, was all about keeping as many people alive as possible. Like I said about, earlier on, if you got to form meaningful relationships with your stakeholders means when you're under pressure, you don't argue about whether it's the optimum level of output. It's about what's the need for that crisis. So you asked me what we would discard, it isn't in our strategy, but it's something that I urge all bus operators to do, And that is keep to the strategy and discard and don't be distracted by temptations, about short term profits. Or let's take a I've had bus manufacturers come to me and say, we can deliver the same sort of buses you're buying for about 10% cheaper, don't do it because you end up with a dolly mixture fleet. And that's costly and inefficient to maintain. The strategy is for us, the all of our buses have as many common components as possible on one supplier. Keep it simple.
Tom :And that really helps to bring the consitancy of the experince to the customer as well.
Matt :I certainly can appreciate knowing that every bus that comes is going to be quality. You talk about a dolly mixture fleet, they're often a case where I think I'm not getting the x-number or whatever, because all of those buses are rickety. I'll maybe walk around the corner and get somebody else's because I don't want to be, you know, have my fillings vibrated out or whatever. Absolutely.
Tom :It's a consistently high quality experience every single time you do it. And I think that that, for me is one of the critical parts of, of convincing people that, you know, not taking their car or a car, is really key. I think if you can, you know, to know exactly what you're getting from the product you're buying, every time it's reliable, it's known to you, it becomes not a second thought in doing. Do you think that's probably fair?
James :Yes, entirely fair. That's exactly what should be happening.
Tom :We had our, what we call our innovation day, which is where we invite our customers together to really talk about some of the challenges that they collectively face and us as a software team, software design team, to work out kind of how we're going to solve those problems and work with with our customers to actually you know, develop the next stages of our roadmap and we did one of those in December. So pre Coronavirus lockdown. And we held that in Brighton this time, when we sort of move around the country doing these sessions, which have now evolved into sort of a two day conference if you like. And I was really impressed with the the report that Blackpool Transport kind of gave on some of the data analytics that you guys have been collecting. And I thought it might be a nice opportunity, James, for you to sort of share some of the some of the work that you guys have done on that because I find it really interesting that all the bus operators that we work with, I think you guys are probably the most progressive when it comes to actually using the data that we're collecting on some of the digital platforms that we that we operate for you.
James :Okay, let me start with some some general remarks about data. We mine, lots of comments that come from stakeholders, our staff, our customers, and particularly where we can we can collect that information in a systematic way through customer surveys. Once you have this anecdotal evidence and this numerical evidence, you've got to interpret it, you know that we were talking earlier on about converting knowledge into wisdom, you got to convert it into the context of your business. That's where the data comes in, because you can start to test the challenges that have come. And you could also create a model and predict the likely outcome from the changes that you're proposing to make. Now we like Google Analytics when we look at the app, because it enables us to get a lot closer to their mindset of customers. So I'll give you an example. Looking at what time of day, what day of the week, the new customers, for the first time, open the app. We were, we were astonished to find today it's between 10am and 11am on Saturdays. When we then realised that 60% of the new users in that year, don't live in an F Y post code district, therefore not on the Flyde coast. These are visitors. And they're coming out the weekend. And they're opening the app for the first time. And they're doing it between 10am and 11am. So that's the time for other marketing messages to be offered to the new user about our products. You know, one of the things you have to do is to make that moment as painless as possible, and to become that person's companion on their time in Blackpool. Now, we took this further and started to ask ourselves, when do people open the app who's not a new user, but an established user? When we looked at a four month period, we realised that customers were buying season tickets before the price rise that had been planned. So they were stockpiling at the old price season tickets. So we're able to market that idea now that our fares increases coming, it's time for you to be astute and to get the best price. And actually, we recommend something like up to 10% of our customers respond to that message. It isn't about how cheap something is. But it's about how clever they are.
Matt :I guess what you're sort of saying there. And we had a very interesting conversation with Robert Jack from Passenger Transport magazine last week. And he was talking about how it was crucial that operators start thinking more like retailers and I think that's exactly what you're describing in what you've just talked about there is you're sort of looking at the trends, you're looking at the data and in a way that perhaps Amazon, at the extreme end of e commerce is, is really data mining to understand how to get the most out of people. That sounds like, you know, you guys are taking that approach as well. And seeing good results. I mean, it's this is this sort of, I imagine it's probably working quite well for you. But is it the sort of thing you could see working for others?
James :Well, anyone who has Passengers app, of course, can use Google Analytics. It's completely free, isn't very complicated to use. It takes a bit of patience. I suggest you give somebody a title of business analyst and therefore they're not going to be driving a bus tomorrow afternoon. I was lucky enough to find a second year economics student who revealed more about regression analysis than I've ever likely to need in the future. But you know, and it was a lot of fun working with that young chap. But if I just turn to Robert for a moment, I think Robert is a refreshing thinker. And he's right to start to talk about the bus industry from a retail perspective. Because if there's the the most important commonality is to do with repeat business. Lifestyle is a commitment to a habit. And we need public transport to be the default habits. And one of the, one of the aims of the strategy we have is knowing that many customers buy their car and don't travel by bus from that day forward. That probably means they have no idea what modern bus travel is like.
Tom :I think your absoloutely right James, for what its worth.
James :We want to be there with the 'wow' when they come back onto a public transport.
Matt :So you're talking about all the stuff And you're turning people around on the buses, which sounds amazing. But let's let's bring this into the here and now. Let's bring this into the into the current health crisis. Can you talk a bit about what you guys are doing to make people feel safe and actually make people safe and travel and and what you guys might need to do to make sure that people feel safe to start travelling on your buses again in future?
James :What I'm going to say is, for us, so obvious, and that is, you need a commitment to quality that includes hygiene and cleanliness. And we're expecting from Monday when there's some liberalisation of the social distancing guidelines that customers will want to move around, want to travel, but they'll expect a higher standard of cleanliness. Now we have a 20 person team working in Blackpool Town Centre, that when buses arrive, they clean them out, they sanitise them, and they make them make that bus as close to perfect as they can. And that includes the driver's cab, of course, and all the other sundry areas. So here again, if we can exceed expectations, that's when the customers give you the loyalty that you wanted, you know, that all bus operators need, that creates that return business and the income stream from a loyal customer.
Tom :I would imagine it's going to be quite difficult for us for some passengers to come back to using public transport, where perhaps they've been in isolation and just generally not travelling and not feeling necessarily a part of a community that they were they were in before. Have you given much thought to the sort of the mindset that returning passengers might be in, with regard to you know, that first step back onto a bus?
James :Yeah. So let's, let's talk about the experience. I mean, one of the will be that we'll be making facemasks available. Yeah, we bought 10,000 of them. We're handing them out to drivers on Tuesday morning. presuming that that's one of the pieces of advice that government give, because at the moment, it is a bit ambiguous about face masks. But if they say, travel on public transport with a mask, we will have the masks ready. They'll cost a pound, the driver will sell you one when you board.
Tom :Okay, so you won't be handing them out for free?
James :We wont be handing them out for free because there will be gone by lunchtime. If we're not careful.
Tom :I was gonna ask how long 10,000 might last?
James :You know, with 35,000 customer journeys a week, I would thought Tuesday afternoon. So we'll make the masks available. The seats we'll have we'll have like covers over the headrests that ask people you know, not to sit next to each other. And we'll be making sure that those cleaning teams, you know, are even more visible.
Matt :So obviously, all of this, you know, that's coming out of your own back pocket. And I guess it sort of leads on to what do you think of the government support package that they've offered? And what concerns do you have for when that finance stopped? You know, what do you need to help bridge this gap? Because you're talking about an increase in in cost there in buying masks, And obviously, you're passing some of that cost on but there's, there's cleaning work, there's going on, there's all these things that weren't part of your plan. So, so what do you think about that?
James :Okay. Well, I think first of all, I'd say I think government support information, attempting to manage the overall situation is actually far better than it's portrayed in the media.
Matt :That's refreshing to hear. And good!
James :I, you know, I try not to make a political statement. I'm simply talking about the logistics of setting up a system for the COVID job retention scheme, four weeks from a standing start to enable employers like ourselves to to receive government support is superb, actually. You know, we made our claim on a Wednesday and the money was in our bank account on Monday morning. That's the kind of responsiveness you need. Now, is the support enough? Well, I don't think it is actually. And that means that we, as employers have to start changing the size of our business, we have to be better at getting more revenue from customers by encouraging them to come back. So we know I guarantee that there will be says structures available to our customers, which are lower than they were before the crisis available. From the beginning of July. We've already switched ourselves to a single fare across the whole network is flat fare - £1.50. Yeah, I mean, that's that's way too low to be economic. But we'll turn that into a zonal fers game, where the actual cost of a single ticket will be something like 20%, lower than when then it was in the mid March. Because nobody can tell you that you're wrong in this situation. What we need is to get more customers than we've ever had before. And that's going to be a struggle, a big struggle for the bus business. Because how do you turn around? The majority of customers have been told don't travel by public transport for the last seven weeks.
Tom :Yeah. And that is that is the that is the the biggest question that everyone is asking right now. How do you turn this situation around? How do you how do you encourage people to get back into a space where there are lots of other people? You know, exactly, as you said, they've spent a long time being told the opposite.
James :Yeah, I mean, one of the things I argued is if you have enough courage and reserves of course, this is a risk free zone. Some of the things that you wanted to do, but you knew that it was hard to justify because you couldn't be sure of the outcomes. This is the moment. If you believe in your you believe in your strategy, use the data and then make a decision. And don't be deflected. Get on with it. I sound a bit like Alan Sugar when I say that.
Matt :Yeah, say it as you're pointing as well! Yeah. Could be could be quite good! So I mean, you guys operate in a fluctuating resort economy, right. So you guys are used to having huge big booms in the summer because you've got lots of people coming and then that might sort of died down in the winter. So what's your experience of the impact of the Coronavirus on your sort of visitor economy, that sort of resort economy that it's built to contract and and expand it seasonally, you know, has that helped you cope in this extreme change because you're so used to a certain element of that already. Do you think that you were better prepared than perhaps others?
James :Okay, I think we were better prepared because of the quality of the management team we have and our belief in our strategy. And that meant that we were able to convince staff that some of the difficult changes that are necessary, should be implemented straight away. But the point that you're making about the seasonal economy is interesting. Blackpool has 25% of the residents who travel using our buses are doing it for leisure purposes. Not shopping, not commuting - for leisure. Now, we have deliberately sought to increase that part of the market. And if retail causes town is going to continue to shrink. I think the way forward for the bus industry is to think more about offering customers better value for money. Example - We, we don't have a day ticket, we have a 24 hour ticket. You know that way, once you purchased it, you have more opportunity to travel, then, you know, a ticket that expires at the end of that operating day. Now, the other thing about seasonality is you get used to expanding and contracting. So we were able to field three timetables from consecutive Sundays in three weeks. So that's what I meant by the flexibility of staff. That meant their duties were volatile. You know, our bus operation consists of 350 people, and we reprogram them on three consecutive weeks. And no one gave us any trouble.
Tom :Because that is a huge challenge. Isn't it? minute, that was very much something that I think a lot of operators struggled with, you know, there was there was this huge demand for changing the schedules. And then there was another, you know, demand to change it again and again and again. And we were seeing all sorts of, you know, pressure being put on network planning teams to, to get those schedules realigned. So that was that was certainly something we spotted in terms of, you know, that a difficult time for those teams, if you like.
James :And actually, that's when the back office staff, the planners, that stretch from the people working at the timetables, through to payroll staff, who have to cope with the anomalies that come through, that's where they really earned their money and the ability to ring up a supplier like Passenger, like Omnibus and say, we have a problem. This is this is how, you know, the system was never intended to be put through this kind of intensity. What can you do to help and you know, Tom, you surprised us when you said we have found a way to pause the season tickets. Yeah. Wow, that was a that was so powerful that we could say to customers, you haven't wasted a penny. If you're going to take an indefinite period of furlough, you don't you don't need to worry about what you've just paid for for your season ticket. Yeah, that surprised me. And I'm sure it's surprise customers.
Tom :So James, final question from from me in terms of the future. I mean, how do you see the next sort of five years maybe even 10 and beyond playing out in Blackpool? I mean, there's, you know, huge amount of change that's happened over the last five years in your time at Blackpool Transport? What's next? what's what's the vision for the management team?
James :Well, I'm gonna answer this strictly from the perspective of Blackpool Transport. Zero emission vehicles is an absolute certainty. We are pitching for the All-electric Town Fund. We think that we've got some advantages because we have 90% plus of the mileage in Blackpool. And we'd also be able to offer a really good testbed for this technology. Let me just broaden that a bit. People know Blackpool for tourism, but the second string to our bow is energy management, we are a large operator of trams as well as buses. It makes sense to us to have electric buses. And we will be working with Blackpool Fylde College to put together apprenticeship courses in maintenance of electric vehicles, both the psps that we'll have and of course, smaller vehicles, we reaching out to the local authorities around us, Wyre and Fyle and asking them the question if it's going to be electric vehicles in future, Why don't we make Blackpool Transport a centre of excellence in terms of maintenance? So that's the kind of thing that we, you know, we're talking about the strategy earlier on where the circumstance has changed, but the strategy stays the same.
Tom :Absolutely.
James :I think I think the other string to what you was talking about - autonomous vehicles...
Tom :I asked this question because I think there was a few years that I'm sure we had a chat about what autonomy looked like in urban areas in cities. And I think I think you and I were talking about the possibility of, you know, low low speed autonomous vehicles, picking people up from the station as they arrived in Blackpool and taking them to their their sort of hotel, or resort destination and even potentially, the possibility of Blackboard Transport, running those fleets. And I think it was very much a kind of blue sky kind of conversation when you know, you think of all the things that might happen, but it certainly sounded like something that, you know, was plausible, you know, with with the trajectory that Blackpool was on and you know, we've been involved in it. It certainly felt to me at the time, like, actually in 5-10 years time I could I could really see that happening. Well, it certainly sounds to me like a third glass of chablis conversation, definitely. You see, you only have to think think about land use for a few minutes. I look out my window here and there are cars everywhere. But those cars are massively underutilised? Why would you need to have Town Centre car parks if you have the right responsive elect autonomous vehicle system that would take people to where they want to go. And then they walk away from the vehicle and it simply goes off to the next person who wants to who wants to journey and if that sounds like a threat to the bus industry, then make sure you're ready for it chapter And perhaps the bus operator ought to have a second string, which is the AV network. And if that AV network is electrically powered, well well that's interesting, isn't it? You know, we ought to get into that technology as soon as possible. There's a can-do attitude here, we know that if we're not in innovative, then we're going to suffer. James, is there anything you'd like to plug whilst you're on the podcast with us? I know you've been busy organising ALBUM, the annual conference for ALBUM this year. And that's obviously been pushed back a little bit. But is there anything you'd like to kind of share with everyone while you're on?
James :Okay, the ALBUM conference in that was planned for May 2020, was intended to be as engaging as possible with high quality speakers, industry figures, we'll make sure that the 2021 variety is just as good. We've been able to retain the goodwill of all of the suppliers, the hotels, the speakers, and you know, almost nobody has come to me wanting a refund a few, but not many. Now, what we're already planning is we need that conference in 2021 to be the kickstart for the ALBUM's new personality. Now that's still being worked on within ALBUM and it will be a development of its long held history of being knowledge shares. It's very important that the membership be expanded. That's a personal opinion. And we'll see how much it can be increased, so as to gather into a bigger network even more experience and knowledge.
Tom :Excellent. Well, James, thank you so much for being on the on this episode of the podcast we've really enjoyed having you on. And it's been really interesting to hear the some of the amazing stuff that's been going on in Blackboard over the last few years and I'm particularly some of your ideas and how it might play out over the next next five or 10. So, thanks again for being on.
James :Tom and thank you for being on our journey with us, since the time that we first worked together, you know, you've made a lot of ideas turn into reality. Much appreciated.
Tom :Our pleasure.
Matt :Next week, we will be talking to Phil Ellis, CEO and co-founder of Beryl. In 2019, Beryl launched their innovative bike sharing system to towns and cities across the UK. As myself and Tom are both huge cycling and active profiles. We're really looking forward to sitting down and talking. As ever, any questions for us or Phil - tweet us @makingpassenger. Until next time!