The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

w at er lo oc hr on ic le .c a W at er lo o C hr on ic le | T hu rs da y, O ct ob er 3, 20 19 | 6 519-746-7900 www.kwhonda.com 465 CONESTOGO RD., WAT. Family Owned & Operatedy Owned & Opera Save Now SNOWBLOWERS FROM $799 HS720C • MSRP $949 • PLUS FREIGHT & P.D.I. SAVE $150 SAVE $200 HS720CHSS928ACT Actual model may differ. S plus freight & tax plus freight & tax WED OCT 9 First United Church, Waterloo | 8 pm Also: OCT 11 Guelph | OCT 12 Cambridge OLD WORLD, NEWWORLD CURATED BYKWS PRINCIPAL BASS IANWHITMAN Travel from 18th-century Europe to 21st-century Kitchener featuring music by J.S. Bach, Telemann and KWS violist David Wadley. KARENWILKINSON Baroque & Beyond Series Sponsor 519.745.4711 • 1.888.745.4717 KWSYMPHONY.CA BA RO QU E & BE YO ND SE RI ES TICKETS INCLUDE HST $37 ADULT $35 SENIOR $15 STUDENT EMMANUEL UNITED CHURCH Corner of Bridgeport & Albert www.emmanueluc.ca Worship Service 10am Sunday School provided WORSHIP WITH US To advertise your services contact Matt Miller at 519-623-7395 ext. 795088 or mmiller@cambridgetimes.ca The region's call centre experienced about three- times the normal customer call volume leading up to and following the launch of the Ion light rail service this past summer. According to Daun Fletcher, the region's direc- tor of citizen service, the Service First Call Centre fields about 1,500 calls/day for all regional services, and of those, 350 are typi- cally related to Grand Riv- er Transit (GRT). Custom- er calls received by staff di- rectly at GRT are forward- ed to the region's Service First Call Centre. During the Ion free ride period, June 21 to July 1, the centre averaged 665 GRT- specific calls per day, and during the first few weeks of service, it averaged more than 1,100 calls per day re- lating to the Ion, new GRT bus routes and Easy Go fare cards. That volume levelled out a little in August to 660 per day, but rose back up first week of September to average 1,000 per day, Fletcher said. "We had another spike at the beginning of Septem- ber, partly because of the Easy Go cards and Ion, but also the students who haven't been here all sum- mer suddenly showing up and saying, 'Oh my god, my bus route has changed,'" she said. "It was the three things happening at once that made it a bit more of a challenge." What compounded mat- ters even further is con- struction season and road- work along major arteries, such as Weber Street, Otta- wa Street, Homer Watson Boulevard and King Street in downtown Kitchener, according to GRT's manag- er of transit development, John Cicuttin. "There's a lot of routes in downtown Kitchener in particular - not only were they new routes and new configuration, they were also on a detour," he said. "So that added to the com- plexity of trying to convey to customers how the new routes are working, and that was bit of a challenge." Some people are still learning about the mobile self-service options avail- able to them such as the Easy Go Trip Planner at GRT.ca. The website also has sections for schedules and maps, fares, passes and service alerts, as well as de- tailed info specific to Ion. People can also call the GRT-specific number 519- 585-7555 and utilize auto- mated features to access re- al-time bus information. "You just need to input the bus stop," Fletcher said. Much of the information online is the same informa- tion the call centre will pro- vide, Fletcher noted, how- ever in many cases, callers are the ones providing helpful tips. "The pleasant surprise that came out of the calls we got around Ion is that people were calling in and sending in emails and even doing Twitter with helpful things, saying 'Hey, when you go to do you next com- munication, maybe keep in mind that doing this would make it easier for people to understand,'" Fletcher said. "They were trying to help out the rest of the com- munity, which is nice, be- cause often people are call- ing in about their own spe- cific issues - so it's kind of nice that people are trying to make it better for oth- ers." Cicuttin said caller feed- back has always crucial to help redesign routes and deal with issues, but has been especially crucial during the Ion rollout. "We're getting feedback on some overcrowding that we're responding to by making some adjustments to try to slot in extra bus- es," Cicuttin said. "We've al- so had to adjust intermedi- ate times of the schedule as we're getting more familiar on how they're impacted by traffic and passenger vol- ume." Cicuttin said GRT has been focusing on major corridors and iXpress bus- es that should come about every 10 to 15 minutes at most. "A lot of that's driven by customer feedback from current users, but also we try to find out from casual users what would make them travel more frequent- ly," he said. "It's like consultation for us as we plan changes and new features and we really encourage riders to give us feedback as often as they'd like, so we can al- ways continue to improve the service." The call centre was pro- vided with additional tem- porary staffing to handle the expected increases in call volume, Fletcher said. September is always busiest month with school returning, she said, howev- er additional staffing is be- ing maintained to get through the fall and winter seasons. "It's one thing to deal with the launch and the students, but we need to be able to deal with things when the snow starts to fall. There are things that will happen." REGIONAL CALL CENTRE FLOODED WITH GRT-RELATED QUESTIONS BILL JACKSON bjackson@kitchenerpost.ca NEWS SPIKES IN CALL CENTRE VOLUMES HELPING DRIVE CHANGES TO ION/GRT SYSTEMS The region's call centre received a larger than usual number of calls after Ion launched. Andrej Ivanov Photo