Upcoming Events

Community Transit Association of America Annual Meeting/Expo
June 5, 2011
Indianapolis
ITS Canada Annual Conference
June 12, 2011
Vancouver, Canada
APTA Rail Conference
June 12, 2011
Boston, MA
National Rural ITS
August 28, 2011
Coeur d'Alene, ID
APTA Annual Conference & Expo
October 3, 2011
New Orleans, LA
ITS World Congress
October 16, 2011
Orlando, FL

Listen to a MyStop sample call

 

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RTD Customer Service Improvement

Client: RTD Denver
Industry: Public Transit

Customer Profile:
As the 15th largest public transit agency in the United States, Regional Transportation District, RTD Denver, services nearly 100 million people each year in the Denver metro area. With bus and light rail routes, their transportation services cover 2,348 square miles across 40 municipalities in eight counties. RTD Denver has developed a complex and comprehensive transportation network of 1,500 vehicles in the Denver area.

Business Challenge:
RTD Denver provides a customer service line for travelers to get access to transit and traffic information. With growth of the transit system, the RTD Denver call center was experiencing a growing  volume of calls per day – to over 8,000 per day. The great majority of these calls – up to 80% - were inquiries regarding bus arrival at a stop.  Since there was no way to separate those calling for schedule information from those with customer service requests, all call traffic was funneled to the overworked call center. The quality customer service reputation of RTD Denver was in jeopardy. They needed to find an efficient way to automate the most common inquiries received by RTD, while still being able to answer customer service requests, all with little to no wait time.

Solution:
RTD Denver turned to LogicTree’s Scheduled Arrival System. The system, which RTD calls “MyStop”,  automates responses for the most common calls received by RTD Denver, such as “When is the next bus scheduled?” giving callers instant access to route information. Using proven speech recognition technology, the RTD’s MyStop can provide future bus and light rail schedules no matter what time the traveler calls. Implementing this system also filtered out schedule and route questions to allow callers with customer service requests to reach the operator with little to no wait.

Results:
In July 2009 the MyStop system launched successfully with an implementation time of under 6 months. In the first  8 months   volume increased by 300% with nearly 80% of the requested schedules delivered automatically.  At the same time, call duration dropped significantly to under 1 minute.  At the end of 2010, nearly 50% of the calls to the call center were handled by MyStop resulting in a record reduction in agent hold time to only 32 seconds. Though RTD projected reaching the 1 million call milestone in 24 months, they were actually at 1.2 million calls on the first anniversary – a usage rate that doubled initial expectations. 

Conclusion:
By implementing the LogicTree MyStop system, RTD Denver has been able to streamline the 3.3 million calls they receive each year by automating nearly 50% of these callers. With callers now choosing  to use the automated system, the call center lines are open to handle customer service related questions with little to no wait. According to Joe Berdaus, Senior Manager, Customer Information for RTD Denver, “LogicTree has exceeded our expectations for the MyStop bus arrival system. The result is that we have been able to provide better customer services to callers that need more assistance while letting those who just want scheduled arrival information to get it more quickly.”