DB Video Advisor: personal, online, eye-to-eye

With the analysis, conception, and development of the DB Video Advisor for the 60+ generation, Basilicom created a digital service tool that provides this target audience with personal answers to all their rail travel questions, before they’ve even left home.

The Customer

DB Vertrieb GmbH is responsible for the sales and ticketing of passenger services operated by Deutsche Bahn as well as numerous other transport companies. The company is thus the interface between Deutsche Bahn and around five and a half million daily passengers in Germany.

5700 Employees
40 % Turnover via digital distribution channels
7000 Ticket vending machines
300 million Tickets sold per year

Projectdescription

Challenge

New product design: analysis, conception, and development of a video advisor for 60+ train travelers

Travelers from the over-60 generation are a substantial, attractive target audience for Deutsche Bahn. However, some members of this group can find it difficult to complete self-service train travel bookings via digital channels. Basilicom was thus commissioned with the analysis, conception, and development of a video tool this particular audience could use to access personal advice from home. After a requirements analysis, it was necessary to define the project’s target vision on the basis of both previous studies and surveys and new ones we conducted ourselves. On this basis, a target audience-appropriate, functionally minimalist user interface had to be designed in DB's corporate identity. The DB ecosystem’s integration conditions had to be met and a high-performance, scalable, yet always pragmatic tech stack had to be ensured. The final, 100 percent target group-ready 60+ solution also needed to be fully operational throughout Germany from day one of its launch.

Solution

From studies and interviews to user interfaces, texts, and designs suited to the target group

To get a concrete handle on the project's target vision, we evaluated existing DB studies in detail and supplemented them with our own, by conducting, for example, a competitor analysis of comparable travel and video consultants. In order to develop optimal solutions scenarios, we conducted numerous interviews with the employees of relevant teams from technology and video travel centers and scrutinized their experiences and daily work routines. On this basis, we were able to define personas and user types, develop functional interfaces and work steps (UXI), and complete all of this with user interfaces, texts, and designs (UI) that would be appropriate for the project’s target audience. Finally, using the PHP framework Laravel, the Javascript framework Vue, and the communication tool Amazon Chime, we completed the Video Advisor’s technological implementation and successful testing.

Result

Face-to-face video conversations enable customer advice tailored to the target group

The innovative Video Advisor developed by Basilicom will enable Deutsche Bahn in the future to comfortably answer questions related to planning train travel, especially for people of the 60-plus generation—this is an alternative to pure online research that is optimally tailored to the target audience. Whether it's about tickets, fares, reservations, or other services, from now on, all this information will be available via a personal video call from the comfort of the traveler’s own home. A test run with selected users from the target audience and the DB video center’s employees garnered a consistently positive response. The first version of our target group-oriented DB Video Advisor is ready for rollout and future expansion stages.

Success Parameters

6 Workshops
18 Interviews conducted
25 Studies evaluated

Base data

Industry Travel and tourism industry, Public Transport, Transport & Logistics, Mobility

Technologies Laravel, AWS Chime

Solution Digital Commerce Plattform

Competencies Interface Design, Frontend Development, Strategy Consulting, User Experience Design, Product Ownership, Process Modeling

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