High Tech with High Touch

April 20, 2012

The Denton County Transportation Authority is getting quite tech savvy these days. DCTA has had email rider alerts, website and facebook for several years. A few years ago, we added our transit schedules to Google Transit and RouteShout. This allowed customers with smart phones to plan trips based on our published schedule. In the last 12 months, we have started “tweeting,” launched Go Request (online customer comment form) and began “Transit Talk.”   Even Jim Cline, DCTA President, has joined the twitterverse (@DCTA_Pres).

As we plan for the next budget year, we are also seeking more ways to communicate with the customer and help you navigate our system more effectively. We are planning for real time passenger information systems that will alert you on when your train or bus will arrive. We are also working  on a system that would allow our rider alerts to be sent via SMS text.

But while we have ventured into the 21st Century with some high tech communication solutions, DCTA is NOT moving away from the more traditional methods used to interact with our customer. We always love to talk to our customers on the phone, at the Transit Center, or when we are out riding our service. In fact, our operations staff – drivers, conductors, engineers and supervisors – are the front lines and interact with our customers numerous times a day. The fact that those employees continually recieve a high satisfaction rating demonstrates our committment to customer service and customer engagement.

Our goal is to combine high tech solutions with the traditional interactions to reach, serve and engage our customers in the communication methods most comfortable to them. Customer service staff is currently reading “Wired and Dangerous”, a book which discusses how customer expectations are shifting and how companies – public and private – should shift their communication and service tactics.

Whatever customer service tools we use, we hope we are meeting your transportation needs.  Thanks for riding!

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