Written by Stephen van Egmond.
Filed under news; practicality.
Friday, March 05 2010
With the announcement of the TTC's customer service advisory panel, I thought I would offer my own suggestion for low-cost improvements to customer service:
Restart the e-commerce project.
The e-commerce project is a simple, low-cost, high-benefit project whose main purpose is to modernize pass purchasing: customers can buy passes with a web browser or a mobile device, anytime they want. No more waiting in line at booths.
This is not even a new project: the TTC issued a competitive RFP in August of 2008 which a number of companies, including Bell, responded to. In October 2009, my company - Tiny Planet- was awarded the contract.
We lasted 21 days between getting the purchase order (the legal start point of our work) and the Commission meeting of October 29, 2009 where the e-commerce project was moved below the funding "line" along with a laundry list of other improvements, from station modernization to replacing the vehicle position-reporting system.
The list of deferred work looks like this:
(source; page 19)
That's us at the bottom of the first list, pushing the total value over $600M.
(Lest you think we're charging the Commission $800k for an e-commerce site, please note our fees are a very modest fraction of that figure. $0.8M is our fees + the TTC's costs to build their end of things, and operate it for three years. There's a mobile application in there too. All for less than half the cost of the project to install debit/credit card machines at every station.)
Customer-visible improvements aside, this project will also provide the TTC's staff with a better understanding of the realities of running an electronic payments system that can be accessed by the public. Typically, online transactions see fraud rates between 4% and 10%. Part of our job is to build up the TTC's countermeasures and institutional understanding of electronic fare payments.
So in summary, this is a project that:
- is relatively cheap.
- has already been through a competitive tender.
- provides clear customer service improvements.
- can be restarted by a Commission decision.
Why not restart it now?
The project is on hold and can be restarted until June 30, 2010, after which time it can be (will be?) cancelled.
Customer service panel: recommend this project be restarted.
TTC Commissioners: don't wait for them to recommend it.
