Free-flow tolling: customer experience at the scale of a motorway network.
Lessons from France’s first large-scale free-flow tolling deployment, on the A13/A14 Paris–Normandy corridor: customer journeys, customer operations, data and change management.
The toll disappears from the journey… and reappears afterwards.
Without barriers, customers no longer pay as they pass: gantries identify the vehicle, and payment happens after the trip — online, by subscription or with an electronic toll tag. The physical touchpoint disappears; the whole relationship shifts to digital and remote channels.
At this scale, exceptions are not marginal but structural: misidentified passages, disputed amounts, exemptions to claim, forgotten payments. Each one becomes a contact, a claim or a revenue risk.
Key workstreams
Customer experience model
Design the journey of a 100% digital toll — information, payment, reminders, disputes — replacing the booth with online journeys and remote channels.
Customer contact center
Build and run a large-scale operation for free-flow and traditional tolling, with teams largely drawn from internal mobility within the tolling workforce.
Data, fraud and revenue
Build the Data function to serve operational performance, fraud prevention and customer insight, protecting revenue streams.
Deployment governance
PMO and user acceptance testing to secure the technology switchover and control its impact on customers.
Change management
Guide millions of motorists toward a new habit — paying after the trip — and prepare teams for new roles.
Public stakeholders
Dialogue with ministries, the transport regulator (ART) and ASFA.
Five lessons
- Exceptions are structural. A system that is 99.9% reliable still produces thousands of degraded cases: the dispute journey must be designed from day one, not afterwards.
- People remain the pivot. Automation handles the nominal flow; agents handle the exception and maintain trust through the switchover.
- KPIs are not enough. Global indicators must be confronted every day with real situations and concrete customer feedback.
- Go back to verifiable facts. Facing increasingly well-argued disputes — soon drafted by the customer’s AI — decisions rest on the timestamp, the vehicle and the applicable rule.
- Customer experience and revenue go together. A clear journey reduces unpaid tolls, disputes and fraud: customer experience becomes a revenue-protection lever.
For operators and concession holders preparing or running a free-flow conversion, in France and across Europe.
- Customer journey and failure-point diagnosis
- Customer operations sizing and organization
- Dispute and claims processes
- Data steering: KPIs, fraud and revenue
- Change management, internal and for motorists
Frequently asked questions
What is free-flow tolling?
Tolling without barriers or toll plazas: gantries above the lanes identify vehicles in motion, and payment happens after the trip — online, by subscription or with an electronic toll tag. Traffic is no longer interrupted.
What changes for customer relations?
The booth disappears: information, payment and disputes move to digital and remote channels. Contact volumes, the nature of requests and the skills required from teams change profoundly.
What are the main risks?
Unpaid tolls and fraud, identification errors, misunderstanding of the new payment habit and contact channels saturating at switchover. They must be addressed together: journeys, operations, data and communication.