Today there was a really cool release from the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District. CUMTD posted their plans for a new system to improve upon 31 processes that would aid in customer service and improvements within CUMTD. The plans align with standards created by the International Organization for Standardization.
CUMTD has essentially created a task force that has been broken down into four key aspects to improve their standards:
The Customer Service Team is currently focused on improving the entry level customer call experience at all three MTD facilities. Specific efforts we’re addressing are the lost and found procedure and complaint taking process.
The Employee Training Team is addressing new training opportunities for our Street Supervisors. Whenever MTD is operating, there is at least one Street Supervisor on duty to monitor service on the street and in our Control Center. They are step in to make judgement calls and support difficult situations. So this aspect team targeted and implemented additional training for them. This included verbal judo and mental health training.
The Safety Team is developing an updated and advanced method for employees to document accidents and incidents. They are also addressing enhanced safety opportunities at our facilities as identified by the Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration’s threat and vulnerability assessment.
The Schedule Adherence Team worked on standardizing the procedure for inserting a Turn Bus into service. Turn Buses are extra buses strategically placed around the community to restore on-time service and respond to the unexpected. Passengers would complain about “phantom or ghost buses” disappearing from our STOPwatch real-time data. These Turn Buses, we discovered, were causing a (albeit) late bus to disappear from STOPwatch completely. The bus would disappear because it was replaced by a bus that was augmenting the route so that it would return to being on time! So by initiating a new procedure we call Drop Off Only, the case of the phantom buses is closed.
Though the process is still in its early stages, it’s definitely worth reading about and monitoring. It’s really great to see MTD being proactive.