In just one year, TriMet (Portland, Oregon’s largest transit agency) scaled its eight-person, Monday-Friday phone-based support team to a 20-person, 24×7 omnichannel powerhouse. Under Jon Bell‘s leadership, the customer care team added social media and SMS channels and rolled out support for Hop Fastpass, the first-ever fare card to be used in Apple’s wallet. With this “lifestyle product” fare card, which can also be used to unlock bike lockers and pay other fares, TriMet is a pioneer in the industry.

How did TriMet grow so fast and improve service quality at the same time? By focusing on developing agents’ skills. In this session Leslie O’Flahavan will describe Trimet’s template rewrite project and their training project. Together, these efforts enabled everyone on the team the long-tenured phone reps, the newly hired social media reps, and the former bus drivers now assigned to the customer care team to serve customers through digital channels.