@LondonMidland is generally considered to be a shining example of how a TOC can use social media to keep its customers informed and to listen to feedback from passengers. Somehow they (and the "they" is understand to be one person) manages to post messages as early as 06:00 and as late as 07:00. The day of the week also seems to be irrelevent. Some of the messages they receive aren't pleasant, but @LondonMidland always seems to find a response which is considered (and often humorous).
First Capital Connect's equivalent, @FirstCC appears to operate only from 0900-1700 which seems strange given that the majority of their customers will be using its services outside of those hours. On the blocking question, it seems that they have had to take measures to protect their staff from having to deal with abusive messages. They've used the Twitter feature which only gives access to their messages to Followers. Two people who were sending inappropriate stuff have been barred...
The second interesting question was about railway staff with personal Twitter accounts posting up messages both to and about their customers. This is an emotive issue, and on Friday it was suggested that it's an area which can impact on a railway company's brand and reputation.
My personal view on all this is that messaging on Twitter should be treated in the same way as any other conversation. We should all be open to other people's views but that it shouldn't be allowed to get personal. The TOCs, their staff and their customers have a lot to gain from sharing information and opinions. We just need to be open, honest and polite :-)
What do you think?
Posts
I've commented on the use of Twitter by train companies on my own blog, and I have to agree that in terms of covering the information needs of commuter and responding to all comers, no-one comes close to London Midland.
ReplyDeleteThe train company I normally travel with, Chiltern, have made the deliberate decision to primarily tweet only during office hours, unless there are problems in which case they have someone on call. That's probably not a bad way to manage the work/life balance when there's primarily a single tweeter. In contrast, I think the LM chap just loves what he does - some would argue a bit *too* much, but must be so useful for LM users.
Dan
one thing to note is @londonmidland also have used iphone, pc, and on at least one occasion a blackberry to tweet.
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