Customer Service Week: Roe Emery III, Digital Customer Relations Liaison

In the digital age, information can be shared in, quite literally, an instant. Within a second, someone in Sweden can learn about something happening on the opposite side of the globe in Argentina. Life takes place online as much as it does outside. RTD’s tens of thousands of customers rely on the agency’s social media and web platforms to learn about service disruptions that may impact their commutes. Digital Customer Relations Liaison Roe Emery III and the Digital Customer Relations Liaison (DCRL) Team step up to the plate to ensure customers are prepared with the information they need to get to where they need to go quickly.

Emery, a native Denverite, is one of six employees who make up the DCRL Team, a dedicated group within RTD’s Customer Care Division that distributes service disruption information through email, text messaging and social media, all while serving as social customer care representatives, assisting customers with concerns and complaints online. He attended Metropolitan State University from 2004 to 2008, majoring in political science and minoring in English. While at Metro, Emery relied on RTD to get to and from class and recreational activities. Today, he is married and has one child.

After graduating, Emery worked in several industries doing a variety of customer service-focused jobs before landing at RTD in 2012 as an information specialist in Customer Care.

“I was doing the worst kind of phone work imaginable,” Emery said. “Calling people at home to try to sell them things. It was the worst.”

“Here,” he said, “I was finally helping people.”

Emery eventually worked his way up to becoming a supervisor within the Telephone Information Center (TIC). He oversaw a group of employees and helped them have more in-depth and detailed conversations with customers to make sure his team has all the details needed to assist them. 

As RTD continued to grow, more and more customers began turning to digital communications, such as email and social media, for their news and updates. Customers began emailing questions and concerns to the agency while also tagging RTD in comments and tweets requesting information. This demand led Customer Care in 2015 to create a new team within the division dedicated to handling customer inquiries via email and social media. The team, composed initially of a single employee focusing strictly on email, grew to three just a few years later, when social media was monitored alongside email. In 2019, the team grew to its current headcount of six.

Emery saw a position open when the team expanded and swept in to take it. Coming straight from the call center floor, he brought a unique perspective to the team.

“The TIC prepared me for the kind of craziness that the DCRL Team gets to experience every day because we got all sorts of random questions in the call center,” Emery said. “Things you don’t normally think of, such as ‘How big of a cart can I bring onboard,’ or ‘Can I bring my chainsaw?’”

“I had this great customer skill base that I was able to use from day one on the DCRL Team and help out the customer side of the digital world,” Emery added. “I’m getting to see this whole other side of the world regarding how information is shared.”

While Emery’s day-to-day work involves handling customer inquiries on social media and email, his and the DCRL Team’s work truly shines when severe impacts to services happen.

“When major incidents happen, we work hard to get real-time information out through social media channels,” Emery said.

The team uses a service alert management system to create and send alerts with little to no delay. These alerts are sent via email, text and X (formerly Twitter) through this system.

Emery finds joy every day he logs into RTD’s social channels and is eager to work with a team with whom he loves collaborating.

“I feel like all of my colleagues go above and beyond,” he said. “I see it so frequently. It is pretty awesome.”