London North Eastern Railway (LNER) has been awarded the prestigious ‘App of the Year’ award at the UK Business Tech Awards 2022.
The UK Business Tech Awards celebrate the UK’s finest tech business and rewards innovative and exceptional application of technology to transform and grow businesses. Judges praised LNER for the creativity and implementation of the project in creating the app, alongside the impressive improvements of the platform based on consumer research and insight.
Danny Gonzalez, Chief Digital and Innovation Officer at LNER, said: “At LNER we are driven by building best-in-class digital experience for people. In creating this app we have delivered game-changing app features that transform the way customers manage their end-to-end journey and use AI-powered technology to offer real-time personalised notifications.
“We believe digital plays a crucial role in helping people have complete control of the various elements of their journey. We look at how we can fix pain points and prioritise the different types of customers we serve as we welcome more and more people to rail.”
The popular LNER App includes many industry firsts, allowing customers to manage their end-to-end journeys, book ahead thanks to extended booking horizons as well as offering live journey alerts. The app streamlines complex industry ticketing options, and combined with ‘LNER SmartSave’ ensures customers can enjoy a smarter and smoother travel experience.
Rated number one in the App Store, the LNER App continues to enhance customer satisfaction and help drive journey growth for rail. Data released earlier this month by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) showed that LNER saw the most customers return to its services compared with pre-pandemic usage than any other franchised operator, topping the table for a record fifth consecutive quarter.
The LNER App empowers and enables customers to make changes to their travel plans up to a few minutes before their journey, as well as being able to upgrade to First Class and use geo-location technology to identify helpful shortcuts. One-click Delay Repay is also available via the LNER App with speedy refunds or the option to donate to the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM).
The success of the LNER app design is reflected in its 4.9 star rating in the App store. It is free to download and offers customers £5 of free credit when signing-up for the popular loyalty scheme which now has more than 500,000 members. Customers can earn 2 per cent credit on bookings to use on future journeys.
LNER has established a proud reputation for pioneering new digital technology to make train travel better for people. LNER was first to introduce ‘Let’s Eat At Your Seat’ which allows customers in Standard Class to browse and buy refreshments using their smart phone and have them delivered directly to their seat when on a journey anywhere along the 956-mile LNER network.
More recently LNER has launched a UK-first trial of edgecasting onboard several Azuma services along the East Coast route. The pioneering project offers customers access to hundreds of hours of content on the ITV Hub without using their own data or using and impacting onboard WiFi quality.
LNER is committed to enhancing the customer experience and has recently completed the third cohort of the accelerator programme, LNER Future Labs. The scheme offers innovative start-ups the opportunity to develop technology solutions to address challenges in rail to provide an even better service for customers who travel with LNER.
Photo credit: LNER
