Henshaw

As I stood on the Skytrain platform at Terminal station during yesterday morning’s snow storm I couldn’t help but wonder why Translink hasn’t begun to use Twitter as a more effective communications tool.

My thinking was that it could alleviate a general customer service principle – customers hate uncertainty or unreliability around a service. Anything that can be done to mitigate that will keep customers generally happier. Coupled with unseasonably cold weather and blowing snow this was especially the case yesterday. Five minutes felt more like 20 minutes.

The waiting and poor weather was compounded by Translink staff on the platform who didn’t know the reason for the delay, neither did mobile news or Translink’s site. I didn’t have information on Translink’s Twitter account (turns out it’s @SkyTrainLady). When I did find it I found the information was unintelligible…. there were lots of tweets on Bridgeport station but not too much on my station. In fact there were so many mentioned of “Bridgeport” that apparently it has become one of the ten fastest trending topics across all of Canada. Seriously.

By not fully participating on Twitter Translink is missing an opportunity. Twitter offers Translink a relatively inexpensive (labour may be associated with this) way to alleviate the anxiety of customers by letting them know of issues as they occur, and this certainly does not have to be a one way push of information, Translink can also listen to customers on immediate issues and on larger issues. In addition Translink could use this as a way to communicate with employees or better yet let employees inform passengers of areas that are being impacted by events.

The beauty of this is how easily Translink could test this. By posting Twitter account information at some high traffic stations and even arming some staff with iPhones Translink could trial empowering employees and giving customers a Twitter account as a call to action very easily.

The alternative? Misinformation, information overload, confusion and a potentially a tarnished brand. What does this look like, something like this “Skytrain platform at Brighouse is packed. Not a single @translink staff in sight to control crowds. It’s gonna get rioty here soon!” Translink’s customers will use whay information they have, if Translink wants to make sure they are using informed information they need to have a harder look at Twitter.