Was #StormSWT the making of rail operator’s social customer care?
Something amazing happened on Monday. Yes, we were visited by the worst storm to hit these shores since 1987. But even more remarkable, the @SW_Trains Twitter feed was filled with happy tweets. Praise and support for the train operator when trains were at a standstill. As a regular commuter on this train line, I know that this is an unusual state of affairs.
South West Trains was late to the Twitter table, with an official account only established a couple of years ago. The community management team has always been quick to respond to tweets, but appears to lack either the breadth of information or the empowerment to handle the wide range of problems passengers face. These limitations combined with an often flat, quite corporate tone of voice often results in the team behind @SW_Trains being the target of anger from unhappy commuters who feel unheard and primed to see the negative in everything.
It felt like the South West Trains team decided to take a whole new approach to handle essential communications around the storm. Over the weekend, @SW_Trains introduced the hashtag #StormSWT for conversations related to the storm. Tweets were very specific about the delays that should be expected on 28 October. What’s interesting to note is that initially, these tweets elicited quite a negative response from the community, who at that point perceived these communications as ‘excuses’. Conversation as usual, then.
Fast (or scroll) forward by one day and things change. Tweets came in thick and fast from @SW_Trains with regular updates and…here we go, this is different…pictures! Pictures of trees fallen across lines, trees smashed through signal boxes, more trees fallen across lines. The community (including me) shared those pictures and not only were we sharing the photos, we were tweeting support for the team – tweets that were responded to with a friendly ‘thank you’ from the team.
Like many reading this blog, I have the kind of job that can be done remotely, so I worked at home and checked the stream for updates regularly. I understood my chances of getting into London that day were zero and I could also see for my own eyes what problems the clean up crews were facing, so I felt sympathy and support, not frustration.
So pictures made a huge difference, but the tone of voice did too. For what felt like the first time, I could hear the human in @SW_Trains tweets – I’m sure I even spotted one that included “*performs cartwheels*” In response to a passenger tweeting that she’d successfully managed to make her train with their help.
#StormSWT was a good example of social customer care in action and the South West Trains community team deserves credit for the way they handled themselves on Monday. I hope it’s the beginning of a new kind of relationship with their community on Twitter.
