Digital portal for P&O Ferries
The simplicity of the design masks the underlying complexity - creating engagement and encouraging its use by colleagues across the business.
For more than a decade we have provided design support to P&O Ferries, improving onboard environments to enhance the customer experience. We have also harnessed our understanding of brand to design and build a digital portal for use by colleagues across the business. This is bespoke online platform is a central part of the internal communications systems, providing employees with a wide range of brand information at their fingertips and supporting more consistency in terms of output.
The portal was designed to appear simple to the user, encouraging interaction with an intuitive user journey.
It comprises four areas:
Service Standards Hub – this covers all aspects of service delivery, from general safety information through to the specific service expectations in each catering outlet on each ship. Content is presented in an engaging way, incorporating onboard photography and graphics to help convey more complex modules.
Colleagues are invited to use the hub as a resource during onboarding and training periods and their knowledge and understanding is assessed through quizzes at each stage.
Onboard Audit System – a bespoke audit section has been designed which allows onboard managers for each ship to check performance and more importantly, to compare levels of consistency in delivery. The areas to be assessed and the information to be collected are fully customisable for each ship, supported by an easy-to-use CMS.
Finishes and Materials Portal – this area is a comprehensive visual asset library which houses all the specification details for every item in customer-facing onboard areas. This covers all key aspects of the interior, including finishes, furnishings, wayfinding and digital assets.
Health and Safety Training System
Health and Safety is critically important for all staff and so to ensure consistency in employee awareness and knowledge, a bespoke training platform was designed and built. Content includes essential and optional modules for onboard and technical staff and progress / attainment levels can be easily tracked using a dashboard feature.
By having an easy to use, centralised point to house all this information, we provided P&O Ferries with a way to encourage the desired standards of brand knowledge, staff behaviour and customer service. Ultimately the key purpose was to drive operational efficiency and improve brand consistency.
The client view: Kerenza Read, Onboard Services Training Manager
“Prioritising our customers is key to our business. Our digital portal was designed to support our vessels and their teams to help us deliver quality, efficiently and consistency across our fleet. The portal has allowed us the flexibility to adapt and evolve the pages in the service portal to meet our current business needs by being able to easily change items to meet a constant changing demand of the business.
Since the portal was designed, we have added an additional Training Module to help support the Health and Safety training and are looking to develop this even further.
The audit section has allowed us to focus on standards but the ability to change questions has meant we can keep up to date with current trends within the business.”
Editor's Note: this post was originally published in December 2021 and has been updated to reflect additional work completed.
