ShuttleID
E-ticketing platform for school transport
Today we published our first ever case study, documenting the success achieved by our initial customer. In the report, we discuss how ShuttleID has protected the customer from £10,000 worth of ticket fraud and saved them an eye watering 240 hours of admin.
It's our first ever case study so we're still figuring things out like format, but it's packed full of brilliant quotes from the customer. I managed to extract them out of some pretty lengthy customer interviews which I think will double up for future content also.
It really is inspiring to hear the positive impact this product is making and I'm banking on this content becoming an important part of the sales pitch.
Full case study available here: https://shuttleid.uk/case-study/
In less than one week rolled out fully for the first customer, we instantly catch four attempts of ticket fraud in the act.
We see cases of ticket sharing between passengers that we come to expect, but we also see elements of parents being complicit in ticket fraud, whilst also uncovering our first case of attempted ticket forgery.
The ticket scanning technology worked great and helps ensure transport operators revenue is protected, whilst ensuring parents and passengers get a fair deal.
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Oh, that's interesting. What kind of consequences would those people committing fraud have to expect?
(Such a weird place to cheat, when your kids' education is on the line)
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Hey Arvid! We leave this at the discretion of the transport operators. We just give them the tools to understand what is actually happening in their operations (previously unknown and exploited). In the most severe cases, parents can expect to lose the remainder of their ticket value (year/term) and the passenger banned from the service. This would be a loss of hundreds of GBP to the parent.
In any case of ticket fraud, parents and schools become involved. There really is no way to cheat, which I think some customers/passengers are just starting to figure out the hard way!
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Then you are providing a great service and a lesson in honesty. Awesome!
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Schools return after the summer break and we now service around 500 passengers across multiple schools. On the first day back, I join a transport operator out in the field and witness first hand passengers board vehicles using their tickets distributed by ShuttleID and validated using our ticket scanning devices.
First customer lists tickets for general sale and ticket orders slowly trickle in. This is the first time ShuttleID starts to generate revenue. With a wider audience and range of technical ability, support queries also start to trickle in from end users.
We uncover our first case of attempted ticket fraud in a pool of just ten passengers. The trial is marked a success and agreement put in place to roll out the system to all eight bus services for the first customer.
We continue to operate for remainder of the term to understand performance of the system and uncover issues used in a real environment on the vehicle.
We roll out an incentivised opt-in trial on a single bus service to find out how:
- End customers find making payment using this new system
- Drivers find using the scanning technology on the vehicle
- What impact this could make to rates of ticket fraud
At this point, I had become a father for the first time (literally, not metaphorically 😂). I'd only been a dad for a month, but juggling a newborn, along with a full time job (w/ commute) and attempting to get a new business off the ground was just not working out. I could already see the deadline for the trial was slipping and something had to give.
With the backing from my wife, I decided to quit my job and go full time with the venture.
After hearing about some of the pains of operating school transport services from an existing client, I officially proposed a system to manage it all - bus ticket payment, distribution and validation. No code had been written but we got agreement in principal to trial it April (the following school term).
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