Case Study: GO Transit

“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “To talk of many things…”

Well, I’m only really going to talk about what our #smrtcce team has been working on these past few weeks. Our GO Transit case study has come to a head.

We’ve been preparing a presentation in the background – and it’ll combine all of our contributions. I’ll link you to it once we’ve perfected it.

For now, I’m going to fill you in on my input (AKA the part that was assigned to me!).

Organizational Goal

GO’s vision of its future, according to its Strategic Plan (2020) is:

“GO Transit will be the preferred choice for interregional travel in the Greater Golden Horseshoe.”

Directly tied to this vision is GO Transit’s Passenger Charter. I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ll state the key one again: “Keeping you in the Know.” Again, this is GO’s promise to its customers to keep them informed.

These are pretty high level, so let’s get to the Communications Objectives.

Communications Objectives

GO Transit lists 6 objectives to achieve their vision. The second item is “GO Transit will be a leader in customer service.” 

One of the ways they plan to be successful in this is through “Effective customer communications.” Here’s exactly what it says:

“Customers will have easy access, through a choice of media, to the information they need to understand GO Transit services, plan their trip, and adjust to any service disruptions. GO customers will be informed promptly and updated frequently when service is disrupted and will receive accurate information about the cause of the delay.” (pg. 15)

The company also lists a challenge to this specific objective:

“Communication methods must constantly evolve to respond to customers’ increasing expectations for accurate and timely information, and to take advantage of new technologies to monitor service and distribute the information to the customers who need it.” (pg. 15)

Appropriately the team’s tactic fits nicely into the communications objectives.

via GO Transit

The Tactic

La pièce de résistance.

The team has come up with an overarching tactic to be employed by GO Transit. Based on our research of other transit systems, and research in to how GO Transit already incorporates the use of social media (keep in mind our focus on Lakeshore West train passengers), here’s what we came up with:

• GO Transit should empower the customer service ambassadors on the trains to be able to tweet updates and delays from dedicated Twitter handles.

For example, for Lakeshore West, using the @LkShWGO  Twitter handle (or something prettier), the customer service ambassadors can tweet to its followers. The account should stipulate the following:

• tweets are part of a wider program to inform and, therefore, not to be solely relied upon
• we’ll do our best to keep up with tweets
• name the customer service ambassadors and list initials of tweeter

The tactic is pretty simple and straightforward. The use of the tool is free. The only times costs come into play are when we discuss training customer service ambassadors and incorporating this into the customer satisfaction survey. But it’s not too intensive, in our opinion.

Why the team thinks this is a good idea

So the team thinks this tactic works for multiple reasons.

First and foremost, the tactic addresses that communications objectives listed above. It’s offering GO Transit passengers yet another way to stay informed. It’s one more option among the different types of media GO Transit is already using to keep its passengers in the know (an app, direct email alerts, signage, etc.). Just another “choice of media.”

Telling customers about these dedicated Twitter handles would be easy considering GO Transit uses all kinds of different media – Facebook, Twitter, its website, emails, etc. It’s just a matter of spreading the word and offering the option.

We also think the tactic addresses that pesky little challenge (also listed above) about communication methods constantly evolving. Customers expect timely and accurate information. Twitter is real time. BOOM.

Customers would have to choose to follow the dedicated handles, which they could do for those transit lines they used most frequently. The dedicated Twitter handles are also easily “stopped” if it’s not something customers are really using.

Another positive outcome could be a reduction in negative comments on other social media platforms used by GO Transit. And, that little report card they have? They might see their scores improve in customer satisfaction.

So what?

Ultimately passengers want to have a little more control over their commutes. Offering them another option to receive updates gives them more information, and the ability to make decisions based on that information. This goes a long way in keeping customers satisfied. And it’s one more way to beef up GO Transit’s customer service program.

What do you think? Got anything to add?