Viking Line’s customer satisfaction and loyalty continue to improve while passenger expectations keep rising. Along with the travel experience, which is continuously being developed, satisfaction is increasingly affected by the digital services that passengers use,  as shown in the results of a recently published EPSI Rating survey.

Viking Line’s Finnish customers are very satisfied and very demanding, according to the EPSI Rating 2024 survey. Viking Line’s customer satisfaction for service between Finland and Sweden has an index score of 76.8, which is the best among shipping companies. For service between Finland and Estonia, Viking Line’s index is 77.2. Customers are very satisfied since the index exceeds 75 points.

Expectations for passengers who responded to the survey are indeed highest for Viking Line.

“Our results improved in every area of the study, and for service to Sweden our NPS (net promoter score), which measures customers’ likeliness to recommend a business, is far better than the score for the second-ranked shipping company. Meanwhile, customer expectations for travel by sea have kept on rising. Our strength is that we have managed to serve different customer groups. On our newest vessel, Viking Glory, passengers can also go to the gym and choose their favourite food in all the vessel’s different restaurants as well as at the different counters in our Market restaurant, which was inspired by the market hall concept. Above all, these fantastic results for customer satisfaction and service quality testify to the skills of our professional staff and the fact that they have managed to exceed the high expectations set for us,” says Viking Line’s Manager, Customer Insight & CRM, Mikael Paulinow.

Viking Line’s customer satisfaction improved most from 2023 on the Helsinki-Tallinn route.

“Viking XPRS was reflagged under the Finnish flag in the spring of 2023, and all the crew members are now our own employees. In conjunction with the reflagging, we also finetuned the vessel’s service concepts, including the variety of restaurants and staff service. Our customers have clearly been very satisfied with these updates.”

Customer feedback at the heart of Viking Line’s development

The survey results show a strong correlation with Viking Line’s own customer satisfaction figures. The company asks customers for their views after their journey, and thousands of responses are collected each month.

“We carry out continuous development work both at the company and vessel level, including under the leadership of our intendants and our vessel management teams. Today food is one of the highlights of people’s journey and is subject to many different expectations and assessments. Our customer responses also help us to update our concepts and offering. For example, we offer asparagus from Åland because our customers asked for this. They appreciate high-quality locally sourced ingredients,” notes Mikael Paulinow.

Growing importance of digital services as part of the travel experience

According to the EPSI Rating results, 71 per cent of passengers in Swedish traffic have used Viking Line’s app, and this use increased a full 23 percentage points from the previous year. Customer satisfaction with the app has also risen to an excellent level.

“The importance of digital services as part of the travel experience has definitely increased. We updated our app a year ago and added many new functions. The day people travel is important in terms of customer satisfaction, but other parts of their journey are also crucial. If something goes wrong in the terminal, the vessel has a lot of fixing to do. We therefore ask our customers for their feedback on all aspects of their journey so that the overall experience will be as good as possible.”

*EPSI Data Collection Services interviewed about 2,000 private customers over the age of 18 who sailed by boat to or from Finland over the past 12 months. The index is based on a scale of 0 to 100, with 0–60 being dissatisfied, 60–75 satisfied and over 75 very satisfied.