The RailStaff Awards 2024

GTR Social Media Team

Govia Thameslink Railway

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Nominations for Rail Team of the Year

Charlotte Neary

Said the following about GTR Social Media Team:

“GTR has often been in the headlines over the last few years through the many challenges the franchise has gone through including industrial action and timetable chaos. Everyone at GTR has had to adapt to crisis on a daily basis and one team in particular stand out at having to deal with communication with customers in a mobile world, the GTR social media team.

Based in the heart of Three Bridges Rail Operating Centre, the GTR social media team deal with customers on social media 24 hours of the day, 7 days a week - the first train operating company to offer this to their customers. On a daily basis, the team deal with anything from service related questions such as "Where is my train?", helping people understand ticketing questions, sharing the latest information relevant to passengers to even reuniting customers with lost property, including lost pets! The team really do everything they can to help keep a communication line open with customers on a one to one basis and broadcast level.

As mentioned at the start, the team have seen crisis hit several times including industrial action, which sadly is a norm now in this age of rail - throughout which the team stood up and did everything they could to ensure customers had the right information they needed at their fingertips, often helping people plan their day around the action. Another more recent crisis comms have been the May 2018 timetable disruption, where simply the system was not ready for such a change and the industry let down customers. Here once again, the social team were on hand to provide customers with a channel of communication during very difficult times for everyone, dealing with over 22K mentions in a single day - never seen before on the largest train operating company in the UK.

The social team at GTR really do go above and beyond with social media as a communication channel keeping the link between the business and the customer with a human touch. This team should be celebrated for their efforts.“