E-business –New Balance Hubway
Brogan Graham (Hypemaster): E-business is happening at
Hubway maybe on one of the highest levels because all transactions happen
either online or by touching a touch screen.
Mary McLaughlin (Marketing Director): It really takes
probably one time of using the system to actually understand how it works; it
is pretty intuitive.
Brogan Graham (Hypemaster): Here’s how bike sharing works.
You walk up to any of the stations as a visitor or someone in town who wants to
try the system. Each of our stations has the ability to swipe a credit card and
print a code and take that code and take out any of the bikes. It’s an
interchangeable system so you can take that bike all the way across town and
drop it off and you can be done with it; that could be it. The other way to use
it is an annual member. We send you a key fob in the mail and that bar code on
the back of that key chain basically represents your account so instead of
having to go to that terminal, you just walk up to one of the bikes, swipe it,
it gives you a green light and you’re off.
Scott Mullen (General Manager)
The Hubway system was conceived as a regional network for
Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, and the surrounding communities. The
total will bring us to about 100 stations and 1,000 bicycles for that initial
launch phase. This will be our first full season in Boston. The initial
projections were 3,000 members, 100,000 trips in the first 12 months would be
considered good; that would be success and we hit those metrics 10 ½ weeks for
100,0000 rides really show you that there’s kind of a nascent demand, you know,
people want this. Boston is already talking about expanding by maybe as much as
50%, which could bring 30 more stations just to the city of Boston proper.
There’s not a Hubway rep at every station to kind of walk you through the
process. I mean it would obviously be unwieldy and that’s a very 1.0 solution
to it, you know, to a 2.0 system.
Brogan Graham (Hypemaster): E-business is the fact that
Hubway is this gigantic city program with all this hardware and all these
people moving bikes and getting people to and from their A and B all day long
in the city of Boston. It has no customer service desk; it has no office where
you go to get your key.
Scott Mullen (General Manager):
There is a certain degree of kind of tech savvy that most of
our annual members have but the casual members as well like they have to swipe
a credit card, they deal with the screen, but we make it as seamless as
possible, make it as easy as possible because again, this shouldn’t be a big
production. Just want to get a bike because I’m going 7 blocks away and we want
to make it easy.
Brogan Graham (Hypemaster):
As far as e-business goes, you know, Hubway there is no
store or counter to walk up to get your key. Everything is done on our website
at the Hubway.com so you put in your information and we mail you a key. If you
want to find out about station updates we do a lot of our marketing, a lot of
our hype and publicity through Facebook. Twitter is also good for blasting
updates and sharing info about cycling infrastructure in Boston and around the
world.
Scott Mullen (General Manager)
We really look at social media from a broader context.
Social media leads to other types of media is the way we look at things. We use
social media not just for marketing but for operations as well.
Brogan Graham (Hypemaster):
We use it sometimes as station updates to say here are
station updates. Here at the south station the system just went down and it
should go live in a few hours and the amount of followers who want to follow
our up to date little tidbits along the way really have gone up. We do email
blasts but everything for the most part is done online. All the transactions
are done online and even right here with the touch screen at the solar powered
station, you know, that’s just interactive there. There’s no attendant. It’s all just done by
using your credit card and using the solar powered touch screen. It’s open all
night, it is 24/7, it is cheap and it’s fun.
It’s a cool way to explore a new city. Many people have questions about
Hubway and how it works such as what do I do if I have a flat tire? What do I
do if I come to rack that’s full of bikes? How do I find the station? All that
information is on the Hubweay.com. For example, if you’re on a ride and you do
get a flat tire, you walk up to any of the stations and simply press the
mechanics button when you dock the bike. That will secure the bike in the
station and it will not be released to the next person. The mechanics will come
and take a look at it and fix it up and get it back out to the fleet.
Scott Mullen (General
Manager): Full or empty stations are equally bad to us because that means a
member can’t either dock a bike or can’t get a bike when they want one. So it’s
all about figuring out how we run the system we have and where does it make the
most sense to grow organically outward.
So we have to be smart about our growth so we can meet demands. If you
think about a business that is not brick and mortar, that is strictly online
maybe it’s selling goods and services or whatever, I mean we leverage the
Internet, of course, because that’s how you sign up as an annual member, we
have an app called spot cycle, which is how you see where the closest stations
are to you and how full or empty they are and you know, and if you maybe need
to go somewhere else. North station is
full right now and I’ve got to get my train in 10 minutes, I’m going to go to
Stanford and Cause Way a block away.
We did a survey of our members at the end of the year last
year and we had about 3,700 which was huge for us because we projected to have
about 3,000 after 12 months.
Brogan Graham (Hypemaster):
Between signing up online, touch screens that are solar
powered in the street, Smartphones that have free apps that make life easier,
the e-business transactions it’s funny, it’s something that older generations
don’t necessarily understand or necessarily can get with. A lot of the younger
employees here will have their folks still kind of confused on what we do.
Scott Mullen (General Manager):
Smart technology, Smartphones, obviously the Internet…, It’s
fundamental to our business.
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