Firms brush up on customers

South West Trains is using laser counting technology to ease overcrowding

Train operators across the country are using passenger counting technology to improve their understanding of customer behaviour and ease overcrowding.

Southeastern and Virgin Trains are using computerised weighing systems while South West Trains has implemented laser counting technology to calculate the number of passengers boarding at each station. The information is then sent to a central database for analysis.

Businesses from all sectors are placing increasing emphasis on gathering improved customer intelligence that can be used to grow sales.

The retail sector is one industry that is particularly reliant on customer information as online and high-street retailers battle for purchasers, says Graham Benson, IT director of online retailer Play.com.

‘Direct retailers such as Play.com have an advantage over bricks-and-mortar retailers as we can collect data directly, which allows us to understand consumer habits,’ he said.

‘This then allows us to target our customers more effectively.’

Benson says the firm’s customer relationship management (CRM) and business intelligence software is key to gathering information and delivering a compelling offering to customers.

Jim Coleman, chief operating officer at JJB Sports’ home shopping channel Golf TV Pro Shop, says analysing information can have a direct impact on growing sales figures.

The firm recently integrated its call management system with CRM software and plans to add to its business intelligence tools to identify buying patterns.

‘We can develop a greater understanding of our customers to allow us to target them more effectively and increase sales,’ said Coleman.

‘We can interrogate the data to determine which products are the best sellers and which products complement each other. We have already increased our average order value by 25 per cent,’ he said.

Businesses are dedicating more resources to understanding their customers, says Datamonitor lead analyst Alex Kwiatkowski. But how they use that data will determine which companies are successful.

‘There have undoubtedly been some impressive results generated from using CRM as you can never know too much about your customers,’ he said.

‘But companies cannot simply bolt on some software and say the work is done. It is about how they act on that data and it is important to link back-office systems to ensure the intelligence gathered is acted on.’

Virgin Trains says linking passenger counting systems to software that monitors fare revenue is vital to maximise sales and ease overcrowding.

‘We can compare past analysis of weight with reservation data to predict which routes will be busy,’ said a Virgin Trains spokesman.

‘If a particular route is too busy, we can ease back on advanced sales, while opening up seats on other routes to improve sales.’

 See next page for Train Counting... in 30 seconds