Problem Management through Social Media

If you follow me via my blog or Twitter (@readyforthenet) you likely would have seen a flurry of tweets and posts around a failure event last week involving the Long Island Railroad (LIRR). Sure it was a bit frustrating for many people, including me; however it evolved into a case study in the use of Social Media to manage through consumer issues.

Tom Golway

Now we are not talking about your average consumer, we are talking about some of the most demanding commuters in the country, commuters who pay substantial ticket fares to travel to very demanding jobs and receive a sub-optimal service.

The LIRR historically has its share of service outages, but what has caused the most pain for their customers has been their lack of clear communications during an outage. The LIRR has tried; they put an e-mail alerting system in place. When it works it is ok; however e-mail alerting is unreliable, not scalable and lacks persistency. Typical complaints are not receiving the alert, receiving the alert long after the event occurred or missing the e-mail in the normal sea of e-mails received daily.

In the age of social media, e-mail alerting is about as useful as writing the message in the sand on a beach at low tide.

While I was relaxing last Sunday, listening to some music I received an e-mail alert from the LIRR around 7PM, telling me of an Amtrak derailment. I decided to look on the Internet to find out more information. No details, just a statement saying I should expect delays in the AM commute.

Now normally I would just use some creative language to describe what I thought about the LIRR and then accept that the commute will be an unplanned nightmare. For some reason I decided I would send an e-mail to the LIRR and provide what them with some advice.

Here’s my e-mail:

	I received an alert from the MTA about issues tomorrow for the AM LIRR commute.
	This would be an ideal time for the LIRR to be proactive and implement a pre-planned reduced schedule. Then leverage social media to get the word out to as many people as possible.
	Why is the MTA always so reactive with so little process? Issues occur that can't be predicted in advance, but flexible response processes can be developed to limit the impact of an issue to your customers.

Sure it was a bit harsh, but a few hours later I received a nice e-mail back from someone at the LIRR. I won’t publish her name even though her e-mail was exactly the type of response that should be sent back, polite and informative. In short she replied that the LIRR had put together a modified schedule and will update their web site and Facebook along with sending tweets.

Now I knew that normally the LIRR does not monitor their social media or e-mails during off-hours and was surprised that I received any response. Based on activity on Twitter, Facebook and the LIRR’s web site it was clear that they were working though the issue, but the impact of their effort were lessened due to an immature social media strategy that appeared to be an extension of their e-mail alerting process.

Given that they appear to be listening and showed a willingness to experiment with social media, I decided that I would follow this closely and provide feedback and encouragement to them and help get their message out by reposting and retweeting and encouraging others to do the same.

The next two days they remained proactive, though made some mistakes along the way. Their message was inconsistent amongst the social media outlets, did not provide links with their tweets, did not use hash tags in their tweets and their e-mail links were to their general web landing page instead of a specific one for updates. Still it was a good effort.

On Wednesday they decided that they would post the revised schedule in a new location. Previously they posted all the information on a single page and then switch to provide information for each line on a separate page. The main site had a general message with no links to the more specific information. This was a major issue and had people convinced that the LIRR went back to their “old ways”.

They were quick to react to this and provide updates that were clearly accessible from their main site. On Thursday they distributed customer satisfaction surveys. By Friday normal service had been restored.

So let’s take a look at what could be improved and what they did get right.

Issues:

• The LIRR didn’t use #LIRR hash tag for their tweets. Twitter is a firehose, always on full capacity. People who follow the LIRR will miss many of their tweets. Hash tags is a way of throttling the Twitter firehose.
• The LIRR didn’t include direct links on any tweets. People want more information, but want a single click to get it.
• The LIRR changed how they posted mid-stream from landing page of LIRR to individual train lines. It confused people and hurt their credibility.
• The LIRR did not post AM schedules until 10:30 to 11PM which was too late for some people to plan.
• During the week the schedule didn’t change so they could have set the schedule for the week.
• The LIRR did not explain the nature of the issue, leaving people without a sense of the scope of the problem.
• Messages across Social Media platforms needs to be consistent.

Positives:

• The LIRR created a plan of action for a well coordinated reduced service. Sure it was painful, but it was consistent and predictable.
• The LIRR used Social Media to get the message out. Yes it was a bit uncoordinated, but was much better than e-mails.
• The use of Facebook notes was a perfect way to post very specific information about their plans.
• Their use of Twitter was good, though could be improved.
• The LIRR listened and adjusted.

Problems happen no matter what. Leadership is all about working to get ahead of the issues and stay ahead of the issues. This means thinking proactively and communicating transparently.

At this phase of the digital revolution leveraging Social Media is the best way to manage issues. It is not easy and at times Social Media appears to be random, but instituting a culture of continuous improvement by listening and learning from each Social Media interaction will enable an organization to remain relevant to their customers.

Comments and thoughts are always welcome.