On @Translink as a case study in public service delivery and interactivity in social media platforms
Anybody who has read my blog before knows that I’ve been extremely critical of the regional transit authority and their online behaviour. I have never been shy about it. But in the past few months, and specially in the past few weeks, I’ve been witnessing (as have most of my friend in the Metro Vancouver region who are on Twitter) an increasing level of interactivity with the @Translink account.
[UPDATE - In my original post, I had intended to praise Jennifer Siddon, the fantastic woman behind @SkytrainLady and in my humble opinion, the model of interactivity and customer service that the rest of Translink's staff followed. You may remember how on top of things Jennifer was while the 2010 Winter Olympics were taking place, and she's kept that same pace, at times checking her Blackberry on the go and answering customer inquiries outside what you could consider normal hours - Jennifer DOES deserve a lot of kudos, and I have said so publicly as well, as shown on the tweet below]
.@SkyTrainLady While I’ll miss you, Jennifer, I have to say @Translink‘s bi-directional comm has improved greatly, you’ve set good example.
Raul Pacheco
hummingbird604
Staffed by a multiplicity of folks who work for the communications area of Translink, the Twitter account has worked hard at keeping up with mentions of “Skytrain”, “Canada Line” and other services. In fact, sometimes they go back in the conversation and track it to the point where they can find what the problem was. This happened to me recently when an 8 Fraser didn’t stop where it should have dropped me off. I didn’t complain, but the folks behind the @Translink Twitter account tracked down the conversation up to the point where they realized what happened.
@hummingbird604 Hi Raul.Do u mind telling me where this occurred pls?I’ll give u link 4 our complaint form as well http://ow.ly/3pZCo TY^JJ
TransLink BC
translink
I asked Erin McConnell from Translink to comment on how they feel about the response from the public and the rationale behind this expanded effort to provide real-time updates and how successful it has been. Below is her response.
I believe the pilot has been a remarkable success for two reasons: customer support and the team running @translink. TransLink customers on Twitter have been tremendous. They have helped us improve the type of information we share by engaging with us directly and have been instrumental in growing our Twitter community by sharing transit and service updates with their followers, allowing us to reach more people across the system. We are thrilled that customers have sent us more commendations for our work on Twitter than for any other project to date. The Customer Information team tweeting from our @translink account has done an outstanding job at providing passengers with real-time, personalized service information. In addition to being extremely dedicated, they were Twitter naturals and truly love engaging with customers through @translink.
In the same way I have criticized Translink before on what I think they’ve done wrong, I have to praise them on what they’ve done right. And I want to give them kudos. Not surprising, most people are feeling the same way!
@translink yes, yes it has. Thank you for the quick reply =). Idunno what I’d do without you guys on Twitter, haha.
Michelle Telford
rememberIOU
Disclosure: I don’t get any special treatment from Translink, this post isn’t paid by them and I am not obligated to write it either. My only internal connection with Translink is with Erin McConnell who works there and is a good friend of mine, but that doesn’t affect at all my assessments of Translink (for previous, very critical posts click here). I just think it’s fantastic that Translink has pushed forward in trying to set a model/standard for public service delivery and interactivity in British Columbia.
Related posts:
- Cross-linking content across social media platforms
- The return of the liveblog?
- My recent Social Media Club Victoria talk: “Towards an Action-Focused Agenda for Social Change Using Social Media” (#smcvictoria) @smcvictoria
- Translink, social media and the issue of instantaneous updates on Twitter
- Stupid decision-making in Translink?
I completely agree. I’ve always followed Jennifer Siddon and found her to be very engaging, but the fact that the company as a whole has become more like this as well can only be a good thing.
Chris (@lyteforce) recently posted..I Heart my Tassimo
TransLink’s foray into social media began a couple of years ago when we began to use YouTube to broadcast transit service info to the media during the nasty winter storys of 2008 / 2009. We ‘backed in’ to Twitter with a number of personal accounts, notably from Jennifer, myseld (@kenhardie) and Drew Snider and soon started to use those channels to communicate major service info and to respond to corporate issues.
In the run-up to the Olympics, we created the @translink account and began to shift our individual Twitter followers to that site. When the Games were on, we staffed a communication centre for about 20 hours a day and one of the four ‘desks’ was dedicated to social media, particularly Twitter.
We have pages and pages of commendations from the Games time tweets.
After the Games, @translink reverted back to support from Drew and me, but in the early fall, the Customer Information centre agreed to take it over with dedicated resources providing coverage for about 18 hours per day. Thanks to Erin McConnell and CI chief Julie Bailey, @translink has regained the traction it had during the Olympics, and we are hopeful to have the current pilot converted into a permanent operation in the 2011 budget.
Thanks Chris for reminding me of Jennifer. I amended my post accordingly.
Thanks Ken for the update and kudos on great work you’ve been doing.