I’m a bit frustrated with Greater Anglia, and let me tell you why.

Back in December 2011, I wrote a post asking a few questions of them as a new operator, and in February 2012 I interviewed them via email about how they’ve been using Twitter to better serve their customers. I had high hopes, like lots of people who depend on rail services for work, that we’d see a real change. If not in actual trains, then at least in customer service.

When I wrote in February, I said:

The way that National Express have embraced Twitter as a critical customer service tool from a simple internal experiment couldn’t be a better example of how all you need to do is be brave enough to get started.

My problem is that all they’ve really done is get started – they’ve not moved things forward.

“I’ll pass your feedback on” is a common refrain when I (and others) ask a question or make a comment.

@daddydeano_no1 I will pass your comments on. Sorry I can’t do anything else. GK

— Greater Anglia (@greateranglia) July 28, 2012

@daddydeano_no1 If you can get to Shenfield trains are starting earlier, if that helps? GK

— Greater Anglia (@greateranglia) July 28, 2012

The problem is, I’ve no idea if that’s actually the case, which links on to my second issue:

There is no blog. Twitter is great, but it’s not the kind of thing you can use to communicate the often quite complicated problems that cause rail delays. The best we can usually hope for is irregular updates via the website or a poster at Liverpool Street.

Writing and posting updates on a blog means they’d be able to build up a decent load of content that would appear when people search for them, they could make more of the issues that National Rail cause them and help people understand that it’s not all their fault.

A quick post written by a signalman about the latest delay would be a lot better than a thinly worded apology from the PR team.

They don’t share enough
Easily the best thing Greater Anglia have done with Twitter is this:

Please see attached pics of earlier lineside fire: twitter.com/NXEastAnglia/s…

— Greater Anglia (@greateranglia) February 2, 2012

Describing an overhead line problem is dull, and hard to get people to understand. Showing me a picture of the mangled wires makes it really easy to understand why things are really broken.

So, my dear Greater Anglia, in the absence of new trains and faster services, why not try this:

1. Set up a blog, get people across the business writing and telling stories.
2. Don’t just use Twitter for customer service – share the inside track on what’s really happening.