Following article is from the Star-Ledger dated 5-15-08.
In cyberspace, NJ Transit can hear when a customer screams
Thursday, May 15, 2008
BY TOM FEENEY
Star-Ledger Staff
NJ Transit riders with suggestions about how to prevent late trains, missed buses and other indignities of the daily commute will soon have a new place to share their ideas.
The agency will run a "virtual ideas cafe" beginning June 1, offering riders a place online to post suggestions, read suggestions left by other riders and vote on the suggestions they like best.
The program, which will be run as a one-month pilot, is the latest of several steps NJ Transit has taken in recent years to be more responsive to customer input, executive director Richard Sarles said.
"Some very good customer ideas have already been implemented, and our message is we want to hear more," Sarles said.
For the past two years, NJ Transit has kept track of customer feedback through software created by Salesforce.com; a San Francisco company whose web-based products help companies manage their relationships with customers.
The software, for which NJ Transit pays $200,000 a year, allows the agency to keep tabs on all of the customer feedback it receives, said James P. Redeker, assistant executive director for policy, technology, and customer service.
The number of customer comments the agency receives has increased by 500 percent in the two years since it began tracking them with the Salesforce.com system, Redeker said. In addition, the time it takes to respond has improved by 60 percent, to less than three days, he said.
Sarles and Redeker cited two examples of changes made in direct response to customer feedback received through the system.
One customer who travels by bus into New York suggested NJ Transit move bus passengers onto the trains on days when there are long delays at the Lincoln Tunnel. Sarles said the agency routinely uses buses to move train passengers when there are disruptions in rail service, and the idea of doing the reverse made sense.
Therefore, it adopted a policy that allows buses bound for the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan to be rerouted to Secaucus Junction or Penn Station in Newark if there are long delays at the Lincoln Tunnel. That allows customers to switch to the trains rather than sitting on a bus in traffic for 90 minutes or more. Buses have been diverted to the train stations twice since February, he said.
It was also in response to customer complaints about how NJ Transit communicates information about delays on the trains that the agency upgraded the communications systems at seven stations on the Raritan Valley Line, Redeker said.