In a few years, will the SNCF Connect application be considered an industrial accident or a success built over time? It is obviously the second hypothesis that Anne Pruvot, general manager of SNCF Connect & Tech, in charge of the application launched at the beginning of the year, wants to believe.
The leader, specialized in the digital transformation of companies, explained herself extensively to BFMTV. Going back to a release in January 2022, marked by various controversies around missing features, criticized aesthetic choices, but also serial bugs.
Search bar, Uber style
The new platform has replaced, among other things, OUI.sncf, the SNCF’s online travel agency dedicated to booking long-distance train tickets. But not only, Anne Pruvot wishes to underline, specifying that SNCF Connect is intended above all to support daily trips, be they Transiliens or TER.
Among users, a question regularly arises: why have we shaken habits so much by offering a search bar as the only home screen? In social networks, many Internet users are confused by the fact that the destination is listed first, and not a starting point and then an arrival point, as was the case in the past.
For the director of SNCF Connect, the explanation is closely linked to the ambition to design an application for everyday life, imagined by taking inspiration from other popular applications.
SNCF Connect, which accounts for over 25 million downloads (dont 22 million OUI.sncf assets) for 2.5 million ordinary visitors (web and mobile), will also replace the tools such as the SNCF Assistant, which shoots to the end of the year. An announcement that is made gradually, by email, to users, since July 20.
Bike, bus, Apple Pay and discount cards
After BFMTV, Anne Pruvot talks about the main projects of her teams, to try to seduce disappointed users. Exchanges with associations are underway to better integrate cycling trips, taking into account the limited capacity of the trains.
Other innovations are planned, such as the possibility of showing only direct journeys, but also the integration of payments through Apple Pay, in particular to speed up the purchase of tickets for short and regular journeys. Another point of improvement planned: the automated integration of discount cards, whose dematerialization currently requires access to another group platform.
Still aiming to offer multimodal travel, SNCF Connect will offer dematerialized bus tickets by the end of the year, in some sixty French cities. These can be purchased in advance or during your train journey, to prepare for the transfer from the station.
The director of SNCF Connect returns in passing to certain controversies linked to the absence of functions during the launch, including the integration of train tickets with Apple Wallet. The tool, which allows you to display the QR code without having to unlock your iPhone, was integrated just a few weeks after launch.
“We have not prepared our clients enough”
If what she called the “Wallet Gate” is, in her eyes, partly unjustified, the leader does not exclude any mea culpa. Therefore, she regrets not having better prepared the ground before the launch, to support these new habits without destabilizing users.
To fill this gap, he makes sure his teams regularly go to stations, and even on trains, to meet passengers. With more than 85 million tickets sold since the beginning of the year, will the SNCF Connect platform finally be able to convince? According to his representative, the average of the notes filed during a month in the Apple and Google application stores is 4.5 / 5, compared to 4/5 in May. A level of satisfaction equivalent to that of OUI.sncf.
Source: BFM TV
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