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XpressLines
Welcome to XpressLines, our online newsletter of the goings and comings of Metro Atlanta's Xpress commuter coach service. If you have a comment about this posting, please drop us a line at customerservice@XpressGa.com. This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Write "XpressLine" in the subject line of your email. We cannot reply to all comments, but we may share it here in the XpressLines!
"...We will transform the way we look at transportation. We will stop focusing only on how much money we spend and start focusing on an outcome-based strategy to create a 21st century transportation network throughout Georgia."
- Governor Sonny Perdue, June 12, 2008
Sending Service Alerts that Are Short and Tweet!
by Robert Alexander
Director for Customer Development
GRTA
Feb. 18, 2010 - Commuting Made Easy is our motto for Xpress, but we know there are rare times when it can be commuting made miserable, especially when you are at a stop and no coach arrives for more than 10 minutes -- and no good information is available on where it is.
Effective communication is a continuing goal for us at GRTA customer service. Our e-mail service -- XpressList -- has grown phenomenally over the years as customers sign up to recieve the latest announcements (and kindly admonishments) about the service. But with 4,000+ subscribers, it takes more than an hour to finish sending to everyone.
Working with our Xpress dispatchers, we have developed a new system to help get service alerts out faster to our customers.
We have begun using Twitter to post service alerts when the coaches will be late 15 minutes or more, or if an emergency re-routing is in effect. Last Friday, we had another icy, slushy commute on Atlanta's interstate highways. Scores of our routes were being delayed by accidents and traffic congestion. over the course of nearly three hours, we sent out 16 tweets about delayed coaches. Customers receiving the tweets shared them with others. In addition to all their other duties, Xpress Dispatch posted updates as soon as they could so customer service could share them with our customers via the twitter/XpressGa.
The tweets don't help coaches maneuver through traffic better, but they at least confirm for our customers that we know there is a problem and have some estimate on new arrival times.
We had 302 "followers" that morning, but by the close of day we had 323, as people signed up to follow XpressGa tweets during the course of the afternoon at twitter.com.(As of today, we have 336 followers.)
Meanwhile, we are also "following" the tweets from MARTAMARKETING and CCT (Cobb Community Transit). So if we see tweets that affect our Xpress customers, such as train delays, we retweet those on XpressGa.
As more customers sign up, we may have separate Twitter accounts for each route, but for now we will keep it simple and post information about major service disruptions for all followers. Let us know how this service is, or is not working for you. I can't promise instantaneous, 100 percent accurate information all of the time, but I can promise you that we will always keep that goal in front of us.
One final word: this technology is helpful but not a perfect solution. Nothing beats the hard work on the ground getting 179 coach trips on time during peak congestion every day. I want to personally thank our supervisor downtown on Feb. 12, Tonia, for her extraordinary work "bus wrangling" during the winter storm. She beats technology any day!
Yours for a stress-free commute!
Improving Communications for Commuting Made Easy
by Robert Alexander
Customer Development Director
GRTA
November - I would like to share with you my response to several of our customers who have commented about improving customer communications. As we head into the heart of winter in Atlanta (that means potential ice storms), establishing real-time communications to our customers is a high priority for Xpress.
As many of you know in our e-mail responses, we recognize how important this issue is and are working on some improvements. An express bus commuter service is not like local transit. If you miss the bus, you usually do not have another one coming every 10 minutes. We also have fewer stops, which for many people their commute also includes a walking a few blocks or more.
That's why getting our customers good information on updated arrival times is important.
We are working to provide that kind of real-time service in several practical ways. It takes 45 minutes to an hour for us to get an XpressList e-mail blast out to our thousands of customers. So, we rely on the e-mail blast primarily as a newsletter, not an alert. But here are some things we are doing:
• We have set up an internal blog so our Xpress dispatchers can post an alert whenever a coach is late for 15 minutes or more. Our customer service representatives from the call center have our website already on their screens, so they can review the alerts. That way all the agents see the same information so when a customer calls in and reaches any agent, the information is available.
We started this effort some time ago in response to your requests to provide better information for our customer service representatives, and it is becoming part of the routine for both Dispatch and the Call Center.
• The second thing we have done is set up a Twitter account (www.twitter.com/XpressGA) for which customers may sign up. We will send a tweet if we have a major service disruption or when our GRTA customer service staff is out at a commuter fair or other public event so you can come by for a face-to-face talk with us. Of course, you have to open your own Twitter account to follow XpressGa, and customers may have to pay for the text message on their phone bill. But it is fast. Many transit agencies now use Twitter for instant messaging.
• The third step is to provide you a mobile website. That means providing our www.Xpressga.com website in a reader-friendly format for your BlackBerry or other mobile browser. It will include the basics: route pages with timetable and stops and the same Dispatch alerts that the call agents are viewing. We hope to launch that service early next year.
Keep in mind that with the reality of Atlanta traffic, arrival delays of up to 10 minutes or more is not that unusual. However, after 15 minutes, we should be getting an alert out to you.
None of the above is the answer alone, but we hope if we can provide several options for customers to choose to get information you need as soon as possible. As always we appreciate receiving your comments and suggestions, so feel free to drop us an e-mail at customerservice@Xpressga.com on how we can improve our communications. These improvements are our next steps to ensure that we truly can provide “commuting made easy” for you and all our customers.
Thank you for riding!
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