Doubling visitor base through a customer-centric transformation programme

British Waterways is a public corporation that manages over 2000 miles of canals and rivers in England, Scotland and Wales. These inland waterways are extraordinarily diverse, ranging from man-made canals like the Grand Union to navigable rivers like the Severn and Trent.

British Waterways’ funding mix includes £70m of public subsidy and £120m of trading income based on waterway, leisure, property and venture activities. In 2003, British Waterways set itself the bold vision that “by 2012 we will have created an expanded, vibrant, largely self-sufficient waterway network used by twice as many people as in 2002. It will be regarded as one of the nation’s most important and valued national assets. Visitors will be delighted with the quality of the experience and as a consequence, many will become active participants”

The leisure-customer challenge

To meet the vision of doubling visitor numbers and becoming financially self-sufficient, Robin Evans, CEO of British Waterways, knew that his team faced a challenge. British Waterways would need to fully exploit the commercial opportunities opening up in waterside leisure activities and property, and to do this, the organisation would need to address:

Existing vs. new customers

British Waterways had a wealth of market research, but it focussed on the existing user base (current boaters, anglers, towpath users etc) rather than what would attract and retain new visitors. 

Asset-based mindset

Most British Waterways managers had engineering backgrounds whilst the vision called for them to develop more entrepreneurial and customer-orientated ways of working.

Connection between insight and action

British Waterways had struggled around an accepted view of the leisure customer, despite the creation of many useful segmentations and classifications, and had experienced many research-driven initiatives which had failed to make a sustained impact on their operating standards.

In late 2004, Robin invited CGA to assist. His challenge was: 

• Provide a practical and thoroughly researched definition of British Waterway’s core leisure customers and their needs; 
• Design a detailed set of standards and service offerings for meeting leisure customer needs, developed into a trial implementation format; and
• Present a language and process for cementing the customer into the heart of the organisation.

Over the course of the next 20 weeks, CGA helped lead a cross-functional British Waterways team on a major Customer Insight Programme. Outputs to date have been:

Agreed core customer clusters

CGA used existing and new research to refine down from 75 existing customer segments to 3 core clusters (eg ‘Activity & Facility Seekers’) covering 11 customer segments (eg ‘family day trippers’, ‘holiday boaters’), mapping the value and volume relationship of these clusters to the goals set out in British Waterways’ vision.

‘Bringing customer segments alive’

Throughout the research phase, assets were created to help communicate the understanding of customer segments to the organisation. These included video footage highlights, cartoon-style illustrations and jargon-busting naming conventions.

Moments of Truth

For each customer segment, CGA’s insight methodology compared and contrasted the value and importance placed by the customer, with the customer’s rating of British Waterways’ delivery. Crucially, this methodology captured both the functional and emotional needs of customers. Eight ‘Moments of Truth’ (MOTS) emerged, the defining points of influence within a visitor’s experience where British Waterways has an opportunity to genuinely delight the visitor, such as ‘first impressions’, ‘what’s on around you’ and ‘spick-and-span’. For each MOT, the insight programme illustrated how customers describe the importance of the experience, provided examples of benchmark practice from other leisure operators, and set out initiatives which British Waterways could pilot.

Bridging the gap between insight and implementation

In total, 68 new service initiatives were identified and evaluated by the cross-functional team, comparing value created with ease of implementation. Of these, 11 were chosen as top priority. For each of the 11, a service standard has been written detailing what has to be achieved on the ground to create customer delight and how British Waterways will measure it.

Trials

The customer segments, MOTS and resulting initiatives have been enthusiastically accepted by British Waterways and 5 trial sites are currently being prepared for the implementation of the customer insight programme.

As might be expected, the implications of such a customer insight programme have not been restricted to the trial sites. Internal culture and communications, leadership coaching for General Managers, staff recruitment selection criteria, and a national reclassification of assets based on leisure potential are just some of the areas that have been highlighted for change as a result of British Waterways putting the customer at the heart of their organisation.