RTD's DCRL team serves as the agency's digital frontline

Picture this: it is 7 a.m. on a Tuesday when a tractor trailer heading northbound on I-25 makes contact with the E Line flyover between Sky Ridge and Lone Tree stations. Due to the damage to the bridge, light rail service is suspended between Lincoln and RidgeGate Parkway stations, with shuttle buses replacing light rail service between the aforementioned stations. In a matter of minutes after the accident, service alerts are already sent out to tens of thousands of customers via email, text and X (formerly known as Twitter) regarding the disruption, the cause, the shuttle bus service and ways to navigate the disruption. Local TV stations quickly pick up the service alerts and share the news on their morning broadcasts. Morning radio show traffic reporters share the news over the airwaves to residents across the metro area. In 15 minutes, hundreds of thousands of people are informed of the disruption and suggestions on how to navigate it.

How did the word get out so fast? Simple: RTD’s Digital Customer Relations Liaison team, or DCRL team for short, does what they do best – rapid-fire digital communication.

Officially founded in 2014, the DCRL team handles most of the agency’s digital customer care and service disruption communications. Prior to 2014, one employee responded to emails from customers. As more emails started flowing in and piling up, it became apparent that a dedicated team needed to be established.

“Inbound customer communication via email and web had increased three-fold in a relatively short period of time,” said Will Adams, Senior Manager of Customer Care. “More importantly, a serious deficiency was recognized in RTD’s outbound communication regarding light rail service disruptions and trip cancellations.”

Recognizing the unique opportunity this posed for the agency, Adams worked to create the DCRL team, adding one additional staff member to help respond to the increased influx of customer inquiries, as well as establishing a standard operating procedure for communicating service disruptions digitally. It did not take long for the team to adopt Facebook and Twitter as a communications tool for both inquiries and service disruptions.

“While greatly expanding our communication via service alerts, we also recognized the desire by a large subset of customers to interact with us via social media, an area in which RTD was already years behind at that point in time,” Adams said.

As RTD’s social media communication efforts increased, so did customer interest in interacting with the agency via social media platforms. By early 2016, volume had increased substantially, and two additional team members were added, with another two added in 2019, Adams said.

Today, the team consists of Roe Emery III, Bob Knudsen, Araceli Blanco, Jose Vasquez and Emilee Cordes, piloted by Kory McNail, Lead Digital Customer Relations Liaison. They manage the agency’s service alerts and respond to customer inquiries from Facebook, X, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram, as well as email inquiries through Salesforce.

As the team has grown, so has its footprint. Based out of the 711 Building, the same facility that houses N Line Commuter Rail Transportation, Treasury Revenue Systems Group and Customer Care, members of the team can be found weekdays at Mariposa during morning and evening rush hours, residing in the SCADA Control room with light rail controllers. By doing this, the team can communicate disruption info to customers almost instantaneously.

“Our role is to be liaisons for this information,” McNail said. “We work with service planning, light rail control and bus dispatch to make sure that we communicate when things are working and when things aren’t working as accurately as possible.”

Kory McNail, Lead Digital Customer Relations Liaison, sits at a dedicated desk within the light rail control room to monitor disruptions in real time.

While the main focuses of the team are social media and email customer care, the group is also responsible for issuing service alerts through the Service Alert Management System (SAMS). SAMS is the centerpiece of the team’s disruption communication strategy. Developed in collaboration with Arcadis IBI Group, SAMS allows the DCRL team to get information about delays, cancellations, detours and much more out in a few quick clicks of a mouse. This system ties into many of RTD’s first- and third-party systems through its General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data, such as Next Ride, Trip Planner, Transit app, Google Maps, Salesforce and even directly into X.

“The DCRL team helps us maintain a holistic view of agency operations and impacts to customers by maintaining a presence in areas outside of the Customer Care Division, allowing for two-way communications.” Adams said.

Being a member of the DCRL team means being on alert and ready to respond to any disruption in a moment’s notice, from a simple 10-minute delay on the W Line due to a crossing gate issue to a systemwide disruption such as a blizzard that impacts all RTD services.

“Every day is new. Every day is different,” McNail said. “It’s a lot of creative problem solving when there is an issue, such as a power outage or derailment.”

While most disruptions involve something relatively minor, such as a mechanical issue on a train or a track issue, there will be the odd time something truly unusual happens when the DCRL team has to find a way to communicate effectively.

“In 2018, we had a disruption that was caused by a Jeep driving the opposite direction of traffic on the tracks through the downtown loop,” McNail said. “Then, the Jeep drove through Theatre District·Convention Center Station and crossed the Speer Boulevard light rail bridge before turning off our tracks at 9th Street. We had to do an emergency halt to all downtown trains and call control and Transit Police so they could get them off the tracks.”

The team has perfected the art of how disruption information is disseminated through which platforms. When the team is notified of a disruption, they quickly assess the severity of it. If it is something minor and limited to a single trip or train, that information will be posted to the website. For disruptions that impact several trips, subscribed customers are sent emails or texts alerting them to which trips are impacted. For disruptions that cause systemwide disruptions or impact entire rail lines and stations, such as a gas leak, power outage or police activity, impacted customers will receive text and email notifications, and the disruption will be posted to X and our website.

Additionally, team members stationed at Mariposa can update signage at all light rail stations regarding disruption information and can even communicate vocally to customers on the platforms via a public address system.

When it comes to communicating during a major disruption, the team triages inquiries depending on the customers’ proximity to the disruption.

“Anytime there is a major accident, we prioritize safety and the safety of our customers,” McNail said. “If there is an active hazard, we will try to message and communicate to the affected area and respond to those that are most affected first.”

Next, the team moves on to those who are inconvenienced by the disruption, such as customers waiting down the line and would benefit from being provided with alternatives.

“Our focus is always going to be on safety and getting the customers where they need to go that are being affected by the issue,” McNail said.