New Jersey Transit Brings Rapid Service to Paratransit Riders With Replicant

By Replicant
July 10, 2023

Customer Overview

NJ TRANSIT is the nation’s largest statewide public transit provider by area. With a ridership of over 175 million per year, customers in New Jersey rely on the agency’s buses, trains and light rail to get where they need to go quickly and safely.

Through their ADA paratransit program, Access Link, customers who are unable to use fixed routes can schedule specialized rides and receive support through a dedicated contact center.

Industry: Transportation
Size: 175M+ Annual Ridership
Call Volume: 89K+ Calls / Month
Use Cases: Check Ride Status, Cancel a Ride

The Challenge

NJ TRANSIT’s Access Link program measures success in three ways: timeliness, efficiency and customer satisfaction. While their service levels were on par with other state agencies before implementing Replicant, they were comparatively lower than those of traditional contact centers.

Their CSAT scores declined due to a dated IVR and agent staffing challenges. Access Link needed a solution that was intuitive, easy to implement, and could accommodate customers with disabilities or those who speak a non-English language.

They also needed a way to lower agent costs, reduce hold times, and navigate unpredictable call volumes. NJ TRANSIT chose Replicant in part because our platform could plug into their systems without forcing them to overhaul everything.

The Partnership

Replicant and NJ TRANSIT partnered to accomplish two main goals: Increase customer usage of their automated phone system and reduce wait times by freeing up agents.

Replicant designed a Thinking Machine to first fully automate Ride Status and Ride Cancellation calls, two of their highest volume requests. By doing so, NJ TRANSIT could provide a way for customers to manage their rides without waiting on hold.

Additionally, they could avoid hiring additional agents by instead redeploying their workforce to focus on more complex requests while the Thinking Machine handled basic ride inquiries. This significantly improved agent satisfaction and engagement, and made the most of the long training cycles needed to onboard an agent trained in paratransit.

The Outcome

Within the first month of going live with Replicant, NJ TRANSIT’s wait times for automated calls not requiring a live agent were cut to 0 minutes. Compared to their previous IVR, which struggled to achieve higher than a 9% usage rate, customers began opting to use the Thinking Machine at well over a double-digit clip in less than a month.

The increased usage rates immediately translated to higher agent efficiency, increased service capacity and reduced hiring costs. An average CSAT score above 4 out of 5 reflects an effective, intuitive customer experience. And where their previous IVR’s data was locked in a black box, Replicant’s advanced analytics are enabling NJ TRANSIT to scale automation to new use cases and lead the way in paratransit innovation.