Eurostar Group, created from the merger of Eurostar and French rail company Thalys in May 2022, is an organisation that prides itself on its “customer orientation and customer focus”, in the words of Chief Technology & Process Optimisation Officer Laurent Bellan.
“We are a company that is focused on delivering the best possible customer experience,” he told Econsultancy.
When Eurostar Group underwent a wide-ranging digital transformation, known as ‘Project Delta’, to merge the two organisations and overhaul the Group’s web presence, mobile app and loyalty programme, the end goal was to improve the customer journey and experience – but bringing station staff ‘on board’ with the transformation was also critical. The majority of Eurostar Group’s employees are based on trains and in stations and depots across the UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, making them more difficult to reach and engage.
The challenge: to support this geographically dispersed workforce through the transformation process and ensure that they were well-equipped to help the customer, thus resulting in a better experience for both customers and staff.
“At the end of the day, it’s … about the business impact and the people”
Bellan explains that Eurostar Group’s transformation had a “huge impact” on staff because two organisations that had once been separate were merging – right down to the IT systems and commercial operation. “We launched the new IT and commercial organisation at the same time as the new website, the new tools, and the new brand,” Bellan explains.
Eurostar Group put two change management programmes in place to help staff with the transition. One was dedicated to Project Delta and focused primarily on contact centre, commercial and IT staff across countries; the other was linked to the new joint brand launch.
“We combined these two change management programmes – we invested a lot in this,” says Bellan. “It was a large effort – [but] it was quite successful. We managed to have the two change teams work seamlessly together … the most difficult-to-reach people are the onboard people. Because they are not in the office – they are constantly moving from one country to the other.
“To sit them down, give them training, listen to them, et cetera, is quite hard. And so we put some change management stands in each of the stations – and they were involving our colleagues, bringing them together … showing them what … the new customer experience was going to be like; talking to them about the brand launch; listening to their comments; and making them aware of the specificities.”
Altogether, between train managers, train drivers, station staff (including a larger border crossing staff in London) and maintenance depot engineers, Bellan estimates that more than two-thirds of Eurostar Group’s people are not based in an office. And with the exception of maintenance engineers, “they are the ones that are very often in contact with the customers.
“So, reaching out to them, making sure they understand what is happening, how the customer experience is changing, how the new loyalty system works, how the new processes work in case of disruption – is absolutely critical.”
In all the projects we do with big brands – it’s never a tech problem…
Jean-Christophe Pitié, Chief Marketing and Partner Officer at Contentsquare, who partnered with Eurostar Group in their digital transformation, adds, “In all the projects we do with big brands – it’s never a tech problem. There are always technology challenges in the user experience … but at the end of the day, it’s really about the business impact and the people.
“How do you align … the teams, and processes – how do you make sure you don’t lose customers, and lose conversion rate? It’s always one of the top business goals for our partners.”
An improved staff and customer experience
Bellan describes the improvements from the replatform as “twofold”: customer experience improvements and staff improvements.
Contact centre staff are now better-equipped to help customers after the contact centre systems were migrated to Salesforce – a tool that was already being used on the Eurostar end. “As a customer, there is a lot less, for example, ‘I will put you on hold for five minutes and you don’t know what’s going on…’ This doesn’t happen, because the person who is talking to you will do things in four clicks and you don’t wait.
“…It’s a good customer experience, and it’s good for staff as well.”
Having a digital experience where you can self-serve very quickly makes a big difference.
The company’s handling of loyalty queries has also become more seamless and efficient, and Bellan also described changes to the mobile app that make it much easier for customers whose train was cancelled to rebook onto the next available train. “You can do this on your mobile in less than 30 seconds – which reduces the stress of train cancellations a lot for customers,” Bellan notes.
London’s Eurostar trains, in particular, see a lot of international travellers who don’t speak English or French natively – so they might not feel confident speaking to contact centre staff. “Having a digital experience where you can self-serve very quickly makes a big difference.”
Project Delta: the results
In the wake of Project Delta’s completion, Eurostar Group has seen a steady increase in downloads for the revamped mobile app, which are now up to 5,000 per day. A strong mobile experience is particularly important in travel, as Contentsquare’s Pitié observes: in the travel and hospitality sector, 68% of sessions are conducted on mobile, while 32% take place on desktop.
“What we see is that people tend to [browse] on their mobile, but they tend to buy more on desktop.” And of course, while travelling on the go, a good mobile experience can be crucial for resolving issues.
Other key areas of improvement included search and SEO, where Eurostar optimised a total of 1,200 URLs – a high number due to the numerous local language webpages, in languages such as French, Dutch, and German. Eurostar Group’s web presence was improved, with the Customer Effort Score improving by three points from 80 to 83, and the website conversion rate rising from 4.6% to 5.0%.
Project Delta also improved Eurostar Group’s digital accessibility; a total of 5,000 test sessions were carried out in the course of the replatform, including by visually impaired staff members and those with other accessibility challenges. “It is absolutely something that we are working on,” says Bellan – and this extends beyond the digital experience to making stations and train journeys more accessible.
Eurostar Group’s long term ambition is to reach 30 million annual passengers by 2030, up from the 19 million carried in 2023. “This integrated digital platform, inventory system, and loyalty system, really is an enabler for us … to achieve that goal,” Bellan says.
Econsultancy delivers training and skills assessment, and runs marketing and ecommerce learning academies for global brands.
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