ST Forum: Provide Effective Alert System

This letter in the ST Forum highlights the importance of communication and customer service, in handling an emergency or unexpected overload. Many businesses fail in this task. I read about the delay in the Open Net company and had experienced with the same underlying issue - they were not able to cope with the high workload. This is an important task that big organizations have to deal with, and their existing systems cannot cope. I hope that the big experience of SMRT will get the leaders of the big organizations, including our government agencies, to pay attention to this issue.

SMRT has launched a Twitter feed to give updates on train service disruptions ('More help for passengers'; yesterday). While this is a step in the right direction and an immediate improvement to the provision of timely and accurate information to the public, we have to be mindful that the majority of people do not have Twitter accounts.
But almost all residents of Singapore have a mobile phone. So SMRT and all other major public transport providers, including taxi companies, should provide SMS alerts on any disruption to their services.
Using SMS alerts would greatly enhance public accessibility to such information. As we witnessed during two days of major train service disruptions, travelling on other modes of public transport also was affected as a result, with overcrowded bus stops, long queues at taxi stands and a long wait for buses.
The Land Transport Authority (LTA) and our public transport operators could learn from the National Environment Agency and national water agency PUB, which provide effective and timely round-the-clock SMS alert services for heavy rain and high water levels.
Registrations for the services are easy and the SMS alerts are reliable and extremely useful.
To make transport service disruption information via SMS alerts more accessible, there could be an option for the public to get the alerts in other languages as well, apart from English. This would help address feedback that the electronic displays, written notices and signage at the stations were in English only.
Effective remedies to the train service disruptions may take some time to implement and we cannot rule out more disruptions in the coming days. While the LTA and SMRT may not be able to provide quick solutions to the technical problems, enhancing the flow of information to the public can be done much faster.
Lee Kai Yin

Alex Au had also written an excellent article on the same issue - communication and the flow of information. I invite you to read it. Read it here.

What is the solution for big companies? They have to find an innovative way to deal with customers, to improve communication, to handle the large workload.  Here are some suggestions.

Case study of Dropbox
How to improve customer service