Twitter account @TTChelps uses humour to defuse tense situations
TTC’s Twitter account responds to commuters who have questions about the service, complaints or compliments for employees who went above and beyond the call of duty.

thestar.com
By ALINA BYKOVA
Aug. 29, 2017

Outraged by the latest delay on your TTC commute? Tweeted at the TTC to share your anger? Then you’ve probably come across Ron Sly.

Sly, 32, is one of six TTC customer service representatives who run the transit agency’s Twitter account @TTChelps for commuters who have questions about the service, complaints or compliments for employees who went above and beyond the call of duty. The account is active seven days a week, starting at 7 a.m.

Sly has been on the job for two months, and despite the frustration he sometimes faces from passengers, he says he loves interacting with people all day.

“Everyone gets a response basically, we work at it until we can solve it,” Sly said. “We’re a big massive corporation that you’re sending your issue into, but everyone is treating your issue as the most important one of the day when they’re working on it.”

His Twitter signature is RA with a little rocket emoji beside it, and his everyday interactions with customers range from helping people find the right bus stop to apologizing to angry passengers when there’s a delay.

The TTC has a customer service department with a staff of about 20 people, who, apart from running the Twitter account, answer the phones, write emails and letters, and speak to people in person.

According to Sue Motahedin, the head of the customer service team, the TTC gets an average of 150 complaints per day.

It depends on the week and transit conditions, but the most common complaints are usually service delays, streetcar issues, employee discourtesy, service and route changes and vehicle operation complaints. Once in a while, compliments make the top category, Motahedin said.

When unexpected service interruptions happen - like on Aug. 10 when signal issues on Line 1 caused delays of at least 40 minutes for morning subway users that prompted even the mayor to apologize - the TTC can get more than 500 complaints in a day.

Sly and the rest of the customer service team are on the front lines, trying to answer all of them.

“When an issue arises that is a surprise to us, instead of 100 in a day you respond to 500 in a day, and they’re all really angry,” Sly said. “Unfortunately there’s not much we can do but make sure that they’re heard.”

Sly said reading hundreds of angry tweets can get overwhelming, especially on rough days. But in those situations, he always reminds himself that tomorrow is a new day.

“The vast majority of TTC trips are completed without a problem so we just take some solace in that and start again the next day,” he said.

Sly recalled one interaction he had with a man who tweeted a gif of Zach Galifianakis flipping the bird during a rough morning on the TTC. Sly responded with a gif of Taylor Swift saying ‘sorry,’ and the passenger responded with a gif of Steve Harvey smiling.

“It was short interaction, the TTC kind of ruined his morning, but with a little bit of humor and light-heartedness we can hopefully turn it back around and make it a positive experience,” Sly said. “It’s an interesting challenge on Twitter because you have less than 140 characters to judge what their tone is and how they’ll respond, you don’t want to send a light and fun message to someone who is very upset.”

Robyn Crosby, a 38-year-old Fort York-area resident, tweets at the TTC about once a month, and said her communication with them has always been positive.

“They’re always polite, they said ‘it happened to me yesterday,’ and that made me feel like they could relate to my issue,” Crosby said about an interaction she had with the Twitter account last week.

Both Sly and Motahedin said they want people to know there are real people running the account, who answer the tweets and care about customer experience.

“We are people behind the computer screen who are doing our very best to help,” Motahedin said. “We totally understand when people are frustrated, we’re all TTC riders ourselves.”