Inspiration
Why are people having fun in packed pubs, gruesome standing times for royal events or even new years eve fireworks, and always complain about trains? They practically have the same conditions. Well, it's because they are in good company with friends and other people who celebrate the same thing. Why cant we have this kind of environment for trains? We want to start pioneering that shift of mindset through our app ChatPoint.
What it does
ChatPoint is an application that encourages customers to socialize with others on a train by providing them a platform to chat with other people they could possibly get along with.
How I built it
Using JavaScript at the client side to display data and node.js on the server side to manage distribution of messages.
Advantage to the customer
Most customers described their train rides as "long", "dull", and "boring".
And contrary to popular belief, they do talk to other people on the train. But only if the coversation was started by the other person.
We found it interesting that only 2 out of the 12 people we physically approached declined a chat with us for the survey.
Most of them are open to chatting especially when they are interested on the topic.
Chat point would be a great tool for them to pass their time on the train.
Advantage to TOC's
User data
Since we have a huge collection of customer data, train companies can now adjust certain strategies accordingly. For example some months could be lean seasons and some unknown tourist destinations could only have a few passengers.
Through the app's backend analytics, you could see patterns of certain type of people who use the trains that you couldn't have guessed normally. So you could adjust the marketing accordingly.
You could also see patterns of people's behaviour and their sentiments so you could also adjust operations accordingly.
Additional Revenue
We would have certain chat topics that are sponsored by brands and people would get certain perks if they participate in the discussion such as a discount on the ticket or in shops. So it's kind of an ad but not really because based on their likes, people would want to participate in the discussion.
Based on our survey, the 70% of yes' was raised to 93% when the concept of discounts was introduced.
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