Public Transport in the Attention Economy: The Battle for Eyeballs and Interfaces
Back in 2016 when I was in the process of founding Sn-ap, my on-demand coach travel business, I spent a bit of time pondering a conversational user-interface.
I had a view that the highly linear “From / To / Date” booking input that we use for public transport didn’t really work for users.
I also had a hypothesis that quite a few users find the highly graphical interface somewhat baffling. It works for those of us who love timetables, but that’s not most people.
I wanted Sn-ap customers to be able to say “I’d like to do a day trip to somewhere historic. Any Saturday in the next couple of months except April 24th. Can’t take more than two hours or cost more than £30” and for us to do the rest.
I did some mock-ups and met with a “conversational commerce” company.
I ended up convinced that (a) chatbots were nowhere near capable of doing what I wanted and (b) that this was a distraction from the core business of proving Sn-ap’s operating model.
So I shelved that idea and never went back to it.
But while I was right to stop, I was onto something with the idea.
ChatGPT has shown that people do want to engage conversationally. When it launched, it was the fastest-growing app of all time. Its predecessor as fastest-growing was TikTok. It took ChatGPT just two months to reach 100 million users, compared with 9 months for TikTok and 2.5 years for Instagram; previously the role model for explosive growth.
Both ChatGPT and TikTok provided radically easier formats for accessing information: conversational chat and passive consumption of video.
There are a whole bunch of interesting lessons in these examples of explosive growth. These include:
The decline in brand loyalty
The importance of ease
The platform is more important than the content creator
Let’s look at these one by one.
Decline in brand loyalty
Once upon a time, consumers were unwilling to move from trusted brands. Launching something new was always possible (e.g. Google, Amazon, etc) but it took time. Today, trust in brands has declined (alongside trust in businesses, politicians, governments, media, in fact trust in everything).
As a result, people are more willing to try something from a firm they’ve never heard of - if it does something they can’t get elsewhere - as the trust gap is smaller.
This matters if you’re a transport operator as you can no longer assume that people will automatically come to you for journey planning or advice, if a better alternative exists.
This isn’t to say that trust doesn’t matter. In Switzerland, SBB (highly trusted) has a very high market share of rail planning and bookings. In the UK, local rail operators have very low shares. Indeed, TfL (which is highly trusted) has been able to build - from a standing start only four years ago - a higher share for TfL Go than most rail operator apps, despite rail operators having had their apps for around a decade longer.
Overall, though, trust levels are lower, and people are switchier.
Moreoever, trust has to be earned continuously. Cleaning graffiti, helping carry someone’s bag or giving good information during disruption all contribute to building trust. The person doing turnaround cleaning is an indispensable part of the e-commerce strategy.
The importance of ease
The fact that people are more willing to switch doesn’t mean they will switch.
A few years ago, Uber decided that it would like to be a multi-modal travel platform, as opposed to a cab booking app. It therefore integrated railway bookings into its app and ran an almighty ad campaign. They’ve not revealed how much they spent but my knowledge of marketing costs tells me it will have been many millions of pounds.
And how did they do? Well, the only stat I can get for how they’ve done is that they reported 2,300% growth in “late 2023”. When people put very large percentage growth figures for a brand new product, you should always be suspicious, especially when its measured in seasons not dates (you should see some of my early growth reports for Sn-ap! I even got an invitation to the “High Growth conference”! - you can see me for one second at 1:10…). Moreover, Trainline’s not reported any reduction in earnings, so I think we can assume that Uber’s move into rail has been something of a damp squib.
Why? Well, it’s unlikely to be awareness (virtually every major station was plastered in their adverts as was the telly) but it’s probably that Uber app is not massively easy to use for rail. It certainly doesn’t make things easier than the Trainline. Even though they were literally paying people to switch (10% credit for future Uber purchases, now reduced to 5%), people are overwhelmingly motivated by ease.
The platform is more important than the content creator
TikTok don’t make videos but they’re a pretty big player in videos. Nor do YouTube. Uber’s big vision is to be the ‘platform’ for transport. That’s why they’re willing to sponsor boats in London and, potentially, direct trains to the continent as Uber Train.
ChatGPT is more interesting as the category is called “Generative AI” precisely because ChatGPT generates new content. But there’s a reason why grumpy journalists call it “the plagiarism machine”: the content it generates is based on source materials of… everything ever written by humanity (more or less). I’m well aware that last week’s blog post on how to use management consultants is - even as we speak - being ingested into ChatGPT, to be regurgitated in new forms. People go to ChatGPT not because they’ve created new content but because they’ve found better ways to present old content.
If you’re a content creator (and, as a transport operator, you are: timetables and fares data are ‘content’), then you can assume people will seek to consume this content wherever they find it to be most convenient. It might not even look much like your original content. That’s a risk as you can’t control how ChatGPT regurgitate your content (and for timetable and fare information, it’s often wrong).
No-one “owns” a customer
I often hear transport leaders say things like “we need to own the customer”. It’s a terrible phrase. No-one owns a customer. Slavery has been abolished, thankfully.
What you’re trying to earn is attention: to your app, your website, your loyalty programme, whatever. And attention is the scarcest commodity in the digital age.
The real question isn’t whether they use your platform: it’s whether you’ve made it the default through sheer usefulness, not assumption.
You don’t have to build it to own it
Many public transport authorities and operators will say: "but we’re just not good at apps, websites or tech."
And it’s true. Most transport organisations simply don’t have the internal capabilities to build and iterate digital products like a tech company. Nor do they necessarily have the leaders who know how to drive these kinds of projects. I won’t name which very senior transport leader recently said to me “The only thing I know about AI is how to spell it”.
It’s not surprising: digital or tech skills aren’t those that get you to the top in our sector. Trying to become a digital product organisation is usually a mistake if your core focus is garages.
But that doesn’t mean they’re off the hook. Car manufacturers don’t build every component, but they still take responsibility for the customer experience. Transport organisations can and should do the same.
You don’t have to build everything yourself. But you do have to assemble it. You need to define the best possible customer experience, hold your suppliers accountable and treat the digital interface as a core part of your service. The key skill required is to care. Anyone can do that.
Why This Matters
This might sound like an app question. It’s not. It’s a strategic one.
The process by which a third party inserts itself between a business and its customers is known as “disintermediation”.
Disintermediation has real consequences:
Financially, it limits your ability to shape pricing, offer ancillary services or build direct loyalty. You become - in practice - their supplier, but without the comfort of a contract.
Strategically, it leaves you with no direct channel to inform, engage or support your passengers. You can’t explain changes, gather feedback or respond in real time.
Socially, it undermines your ability to drive behavioural change. If you're trying to encourage sustainable choices, reduce car dependency or support local connectivity, that gets a lot harder when someone else owns the interface. Indeed, it may be that Uber are actually trying to increase car dependency - if the cars are their minicabs. Is that what we want?
Disintermediation might not hurt in the short term but - over time - it hollows out your role.
What all this means
Declining brand loyalty means people are willing to switch.
Trust is the biggest stickiness factor you have - but you have to earn that outside the digital space.
The ‘pull’ factor from competitors is ease. Ease will cause them to switch. Customers aren’t tied to the content creator (as they used to be): they’ll go wherever it’s easiest.
In UK public transport, this isn’t new: Trainline has been the go-to booking provider for nearly twenty years. In London, TfL’s open data service stimulated a generation of public transport apps like Citymapper, which then became dominant.
But this has consequences. UK rail operators struggle to communicate with their own customers. They cannot influence how their services are seen. They can’t show off improved features. They can’t provide information. They can’t deal with issues. They’re entirely at the mercy of Trainline’s product development pipeline.
But it’s also unambiguous that Trainline is easier to use than every single train company app. I’m a rail customer. I book with Trainline.
However, Trainline is a brand too, and trust in brands is falling, so they are just as vulnerable to consumer switchiness. Just because Trainline are dominant today, doesn’t mean that they will continue to be.
The question is whether public transport operators and authorities are willing to treat digital experience as a core part of the service. If they don’t, they’ll lose the ability to influence their customers, shape journeys and meet their public goals.
You don’t have to build it. But you do have to care. Because in the attention economy, people will go wherever the eyeballs are best looked after.
My hypothesis, back in 2016, was that people would like to be able to type or say “I’d like to do a day trip to somewhere historic. Any Saturday in the next couple of months except April 24th. Can’t take more than two hours or cost more than £30” and to be served the right response.
I may be wrong but - if I’m right - someone will do it.
Who?
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