Edinburgh Trams Enhances Customer Satisfaction with Freshworks

Edinburgh Trams is an award-winning tram operator and infrastructure manager based in Scotland’s capital city. The company operates a fleet of 27 trams seven days a week, offering fast, frequent services to over 7.3 million passengers annually. Edinburgh Trams takes service reliability very seriously, operating at a 98.84% service reliability rate and 98.89% punctuality rate. As the organization matured, it decided to bring its Customer Services operation in-house to provide personalized advice to customers in a timely and accurate fashion.

Edinburgh Trams, an award-winning tram operator based in Scotland, was facing significant challenges in customer service. The company was dealing with low customer satisfaction and inadequate reporting and customer insights. The customer service was initially shared with their sister organization, Lothian Buses, as part of an existing Service Level Agreement. However, as Edinburgh Trams matured as an organization, the decision was made to bring the Customer Services operation in-house. This was to ensure that Customer Relations Officers at Edinburgh Trams could provide personalized advice to customers in a timely and accurate fashion. However, the transition from a shared service to an in-house operation presented its own set of challenges, including managing customer queries across multiple channels such as email, phone, help-center, chat, and social media.

Edinburgh Trams chose Freshdesk and Freshchat, products of Freshworks, to manage all incoming customer queries. The key reason for choosing Freshworks was the ease of managing incoming tickets from all these channels on a single platform. After implementing the Freshworks platform in February 2016, the team achieved a massive improvement in customer satisfaction. The average response time to customer queries across channels was brought down from 20 days to just 1 hour. The customer service team used the live-chat functionality on the website to provide real-time information and updates on tram timings, schedule changes, delays and more. They also had access to complete customer profiles, past conversations and booking history so that they could reply with context. The analytics and reporting in Freshdesk helped the team remove bottlenecks and make long-term service improvements.

• The implementation of Freshworks has brought about significant improvements to customer service at Edinburgh Trams. The unified platform for managing customer queries across multiple channels has streamlined the process and improved efficiency. The live-chat functionality has enabled the team to provide real-time information and updates, enhancing customer experience. The access to complete customer profiles, past conversations and booking history has allowed the team to provide personalized and context-specific responses. The analytics and reporting feature of Freshdesk has provided valuable customer insights, helping the team identify bottlenecks and make long-term service improvements. For instance, ticket trend data revealed customer frustration due to a policy mandating a £3 minimum spend for credit card payments. This insight led to the removal of the minimum spend, improving the purchase experience.

• CSAT score increased from 10% to 95%

• Average response time to customer queries reduced from 20 days to 1 hour

• First resolution time decreased by 99%