The Future of the Gateline
London Underground's Customer Charter scheme allows you to apply online for refunds due to delays. In the past, you identified yourself plus details of your ticket, and you'd receive a voucher that you could take to a station and have loaded on to your Oystercard as pre-pay.
Now, LU have revamped their application site, and offer three refund payment methods:
[ Accompanied by: "Tube station where you want your refund sent (online & loaded onto gates payment methods only)". ]
You've been able to load up your Oystercard with pre-pay at a nominated station for some time now, so the event-driven ticket manager has been well tested. It's good to see TfL integrate it with the refund system, though it would be nice if they could email to let you know that your refund is ready to be picked up.
More generally, being able to load arbitrary digital "values" on to an Oystercard will promote its use as a universal payment system. How about the cafes in and around a station having a promotional day where every Oyster user passing through the station receives a 5% discount voucher for the cafes on their Oystercard? Or every Oyster season ticket holder whose home station it is receiving a 10% discount? (Ideally, the cafes have cheap Oyster readers; but until then, TfL can send paper vouchers on the cafes' behalf, to be presented at the counter.)
Infrastructure managers like TfL then become perfect customers for the event-detection system we used to sell at Elity. Local businesses would specify which customers they want to target, and TfL would implement the customer presence detection and criteria evaluation - "every season ticket holder", "every pre-pay user who visits this station regularly", "anyone with an Orange mobile phone on the 11th and 12th of March, when the local Orange shop is having a sale." (TfL know many people's mobile numbers in order to send transport alerts, so can identify their network.)
I don't mind digital intrusion as long as the individual consumer is in control. In fact, make the whole thing opt-in. If there's real value there - as offered by Nectar and Tesco ClubCard - then people will like it.
Now, LU have revamped their application site, and offer three refund payment methods:
[ Accompanied by: "Tube station where you want your refund sent (online & loaded onto gates payment methods only)". ]
You've been able to load up your Oystercard with pre-pay at a nominated station for some time now, so the event-driven ticket manager has been well tested. It's good to see TfL integrate it with the refund system, though it would be nice if they could email to let you know that your refund is ready to be picked up.
More generally, being able to load arbitrary digital "values" on to an Oystercard will promote its use as a universal payment system. How about the cafes in and around a station having a promotional day where every Oyster user passing through the station receives a 5% discount voucher for the cafes on their Oystercard? Or every Oyster season ticket holder whose home station it is receiving a 10% discount? (Ideally, the cafes have cheap Oyster readers; but until then, TfL can send paper vouchers on the cafes' behalf, to be presented at the counter.)
Infrastructure managers like TfL then become perfect customers for the event-detection system we used to sell at Elity. Local businesses would specify which customers they want to target, and TfL would implement the customer presence detection and criteria evaluation - "every season ticket holder", "every pre-pay user who visits this station regularly", "anyone with an Orange mobile phone on the 11th and 12th of March, when the local Orange shop is having a sale." (TfL know many people's mobile numbers in order to send transport alerts, so can identify their network.)
I don't mind digital intrusion as long as the individual consumer is in control. In fact, make the whole thing opt-in. If there's real value there - as offered by Nectar and Tesco ClubCard - then people will like it.
posted by Alex Buckley at
12:54 pm
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