‘We want a bit more love’- Transport for London aims to improve brand perception on social media
One of the objectives when it comes to the use of social media at Transport for London (Tfl) is to gain “a bit more love” from its customers, Lucy Whitehead, principle planner social and digital, has revealed.
Speaking at the Connect via Hootsuite London event in London earlier this week, Whitehead said that the government transport body isn’t looking to increase revenue by using social media, but improve brand perception, which she admitted, can be difficult at times.
“Ultimately we want a bit more love, not everybody does love us yet, but that’s our aspiration. It’s a bit of a tough one – maybe I should just say a little more like,” Whitehead joked.
“We’re wanting to show customers that we care about them, we’re listening to them and we also want it to be easy for them to do business with us. We don’t want them to have to sit on the end of the phone waiting for someone to pick up. We want them to be able to contact us in the way that they want to, using the device and channel that they want to.”
Whitehead said that Tfl’s other aims for social media are to offer customers an increased personalised service by providing relevant information about journeys that affect them, be more cost effective when it comes to customer service and to ‘humanise’ the Tfl brand.
Speaking about communicating a travel ‘crisis’, Whitehead said that social media has shifted the way in which Tfl reacts.
“We have crisis’s in varying forms but the one thing that social has really affected is just the speed at which people react. It’s not necessarily going to be you that’s leading the initial response. There’s the incident or the event that happens, generally followed by confusion and then the initial response. And that’s no longer us that’s responding, it’s the people on the ground – the pictures they’re taking and posting.”
Tfl has seen huge growth on social media since it first opened its accounts on Facebook and Twitter two and a half years ago ahead of the London 2012 Olympic Games. It now has 1.5 million followers across 26 Twitter feeds and two Facebook pages.
As part of its Kill Your Speed Not Your Mates campaign, which launched at the end of last month, Tfl has today begun a new format of ad campaigning on Microsoft's Xbox 360 that includes a mobile-enabled element allowing users to engage with the creative by sending an SMS to ad character Mike.