SBB - I'm coming home

SBB is not loved. Not the way the rail company would like it to be. This was revealed by a survey conducted in 2011. SBB is seen as more rational and less emotional. In order to reach the hearts of customers and employees, the communication strategy has been redefined, with the big goal of making SBB one of the top companies in Switzerland in terms of customer satisfaction by 2016. To achieve this, SBB will not only be compared with other railroad companies, but also with the best service companies in Switzerland, and a "three-step plan" has been developed. The measures relate to the areas of internal communication, marketing communication and financial communication.Internal communicationThe first step followed in 2012 with a focus on employees - i.e. internal anchoring. The approximately 31,000 employees are the most important target group for SBB Communications. In order to achieve the strategic goal, employees were integrated into the campaign right from the start: in an internal casting, they could apply to be singers for the SBB song, which was ultimately won by Hanspeter and Selina. The recordings of the song "welcome home" as well as interviews (for example with CEO Andreas Meyer) and the making of the TV commercial were filmed and published on YouTube.

In addition, a large management conference was held, followed by an internal training program that all managers had to complete with their teams by the end of July 2014. In a one-hour workshop, each team develops three specific measures that it intends to implement in its area to improve customer focus by the end of the year. Employees also have the ongoing opportunity to propose specific measures to improve customer focus to Group Management ("Customer focus in concrete terms").Marketing communicationThe measures of the first campaign wave included social media activities on Facebook and Twitter, posters and advertisements, as well as their multiplication through editorial support with articles, for example in the commuter newspaper "Blick am Abend". For the advertisements and posters, "user-generated content" was used for the first time. This means using image and text material from customers and employees. They were able to take photos of themselves while traveling with SBB and upload the snapshots to www.sbb.ch/unterwegs upload.

The uploaded images were then selected for a competition. Visitors to the website were allowed to "like" the pictures. The 30 most popular pictures won a prominent appearance. Their name would be displayed for two months on an SBB carriage next to the SBB logo and could be seen on various routes in Switzerland.Financial communicationThe motto "at home on the move" was also integrated into business reporting. This is because SBB relies on a cross-media setting. The newly developed Mobile Report with optimized output on all end devices functions as an information hub through which three target group-specific publications can be accessed. For example, the "Unterwegs zuhause" brochure, whose image concept is coordinated with SBB's marketing campaign and was also realized with "on the go at home" moments of employees and customers.