An Unusual Blog

Here’s another blog that’s worth a look. Launched in October was the Bath Bus Station Customer Service Centre blog. It’s well laid out and certainly looks official, even though there’s no apparent mention of it on the official First Bristol & Bath sub-site. It’s registered to someone at First based at the bus station.

We’ve long held the view that bus operators could employ blogs to great advantage. The BathCSC’s is a little different to the way in which Southern Vectis uses theirs to explain (among other things) the finer points of bus operation. No, the BathCSC focuses on solving problems, explaining tickets and publicising service issues.

As an example, on 26 January, the blogmaster said, “Badly parked car obstructed buses in Edward Street, Bath yesterday (Sunday) between 14:30 and 15:15. Three of our university services were stuck in the resulting congestion whilst we awaited the police, who eventually had to bounce the car out of the way so that traffic could flow.” How good is that? Here, ordinary passengers can suddenly understand why their bus didn’t come, turning their anger away from First and onto the stupidity of parked motorists.

As yet, there appear few participants’ comments… but here we know from experience how difficult it is to attract them!

BathCSC also employs Facebook and a Twitter service. We tried Twitter here once in August 2007 but at the time no one seemed overly impressed, least of all us. Now, though, Twitter’s gone mainstream, thanks mostly to Stephen Fry and other celebs. BathCSC has a few exchanges regarding service issues. It talks about accidents at the appropriately west country named and idyllic sounding Farrington Gurney and Peasedown St John!!

I note from the blog that First still charges 20p for its Bath timetable. The last time I picked up one of these—again probably in 2007—I marvelled at its sheer simplicity and lack of the frills we usually come to expect. It was a timetable, not a glossy, overt marketing tool, and was quite refreshing for it. It reminded me of the Tilling standard timetables of the mid-late sixties and early seventies, as issued by First's predecessor, the old Bristol Omnibus and others such as Hants & Dorset. Except the paper quality was much the superior. H&D were charging 2/- back then (two shillings, equivalent to 10p). That's worth over £1 at today's prices. Makes 20p seem cheap (the equivalent of about 2d (tuppence) back in 1970).

i Bath Bus Station Customer Services blog

Let the world know of other active customer focused bus blogging good practice in the Comments box