Orlando train tickets, a French success story

The customer satisfaction, a major concern.

Inaugurated in 2014, the first Sunrail lines have everything to prove to satisfy passengers in their daily rides. Yet, in only few months, the rail line company got a bad reputation about the one-way tickets. The reason? A reading problem at the automatic controlling machine to the point where riders were reluctant to use those machines.

In fact, many chips were not read and the paper was fragile, which generated a high scrap rate. And even if trains are comfortable and the staff is pleasant, the passenger experience was spoiled by those big lonely minutes wasted in front of a refractory machine. Inevitably, disappointed riders preferred to use other transport modes.

A true problem for Sunrail, especially since this dysfunction was a financial pit with high compensation costs. So they had to react.

Replace the machines ? Too expensive. It was better to concentrate on the consumables and find a new supplier serious and competent, able to supply reliable tickets. The riders trust was at stake.

Rethink the RFID ticket to ensure performance

If AXEM Technology has been contacted by his partner from the USA, it is because the whole ticket had to be rethought, while ensuring the compatibilities with the structures in place. In fact, the importance of the paper quality was clear, but they had to find a supplier also able to control and optimize the RFID performances.

And to get it done, AXEM Technology teams started by literally dissecting the former ticket to analyze it point by point.

Philippe Mondon “We then realized that some specifications could get optimized. Besides the paper quality, the chip and the antenna also had to get improved”, remembers Philippe MONDON, CEO of the company. “Few months only after the first contacts, we were sending samples to be tested on the field. Then in April 2017, the first 450.000 tickets were deployed in the Sunrail stations”.

Since then, the French supplier AXEM Technology, supplies all the commuter train tickets of the Orlando area. This contract, with a minimum duration of 5 years, represents around 1.5 million pieces/year.