Text Updates for Service Delays

Background

The Auckland Regional Council (ARC) is working to improve Auckland’s rail system, in line with its goal to deliver a rapid transit network for fast, frequent and reliable transport across the region.

The more recent key challenge has involved managing services and customer expectations as the staged rail network refurbishment takes shape.

Text Updates For Service Delays aims to provide direct, real-time commuter information about schedule changes and disruptions, to minimise commuter frustration and increase overall satisfaction with the region’s train services.

The ARC first engaged Touchpoint in April 2004 and, over four weeks, the messaging service framework was formalised and embedded. Text Updates For Service Delays was successfully launched in May 2004.

Target audience

According to a survey, 70% of Auckland rail network users have mobile phones. This equates to 11,200, of the16,000 people using the Auckland rail network on an average weekday.

Channels

Touchpoint implemented/managed the following components of the campaign:

• SMS text messaging
• Web integration for transport centre message scripting and broadcasting

Approach

With no existing real-time delay notification system in place and ongoing rail network upgrades progressing, the ARC identified text messaging as the ideal mechanism to communicate passenger information to help rail commuters better plan their travel.

An ARC survey had established a high incidence of mobile phone ownership and demand for information. The ARC worked with Vodafone Business Services and selected Touchpoint’s off-the-shelf solution. Touchpoint provided ARC with a proven and cost effective system that didn’t require custom development or extensive modification, but could be deployed in a very tight timeframe.

Costing only 20 cents to join, commuters are able register by texting a simple code.Once subscribed all text messages received are free.

Though train delays were typically anticipated in advance, the problem facing the ARC was communicating delay information in a timely fashion. So, a key success factor was a turnkey solution that could broadcast high volumes of text messages at specific moments in time. The system also had to support a simple web interface for rapid message authoring and management.

Details of delays are sent from train and signal box staff to the Britomart Transport Centre platform office, where they are entered into the message system through a simple web interface. A template scripted text is then instantly broadcast to any number of users. Registration codes ensure text updates are sent only to the commuters affected by the delay. The service works on both Telecom and Vodafone networks.

By August 2004 over 1,900 individual customers had subscribed to the service, driven mainly by street level promotion and word of mouth.

How Touchpoint Technology Helped

• Managed registration via SMS
• Managed subscriber database and triggered mass point-in-time broadcasts and responses
• Segmented and coded subscriber database to automate the broadcast of messages pertaining to specific subscribers
• Applied web interface for rail control centre staff to author and broadcast messages
• Enabled real time, web-based tracking of subscribers

Results

• By August 2004 over 1,900 individual customers had subscribed to the service, representing 17 per cent of potential users
• The ARC is able to satisfy commuter demand for real-time network information, which is validated by a high level of unsolicited customer feedback
• Commuters are now more informed and in a better position to plan trips
• The system is completely replicable to any timetabled public transport system and works independently of existing automated delay notification systems
• The ARC can better deliver on its goal of providing more robust services