贝弗利·卡斯特罗
几十年来,, RTD Customer Care’s Telephone Information Center has been a constant for customers, a touchstone when they need help or directions. 在几秒钟内, 小队的探员可以定位一辆车, 帮助计划旅行, or recommend travel options that may not have been considered - to name just a few reasons people call. 每次谈话都不一样.
在繁忙的环境中，这是不变的? 贝福卡斯特罗. The Thornton resident is the longest-serving information specialist in the agency’s history, having joined RTD in this role 33 years ago after leaving Rocky Flats. “我想我会四处走动, but I just 太k a liking to what I was doing, 也没换过别的位置,卡斯特罗说.
When your job is to answer the phone, 30-plus years translates to a lot of calls. No one knows the exact number that 卡斯特罗 has fielded, as RTD hasn’t kept such statistics in some time, but she is known to have surpassed 1 million calls over a decade ago. 她也没有退休的计划. “I’m just not ready to go yet,卡斯特罗说, chuckling.
Her employment with RTD predates the introduction of rail and myriad special services to the region. As the transit system has grown to encompass more modes of travel, 更多的站点和更多的服务, 客户旅行变得更加复杂, 卡斯特罗指出. Years ago, 她说, “People were taking simpler trips, from here to work, or from here to school. And now, it seems like people are traveling farther. 他们在两者之间做得更多.” Smartphones allow customers to carry information in hand, 启用购票功能, schedule browsing and access to real-time information – “but they still call,”她说。. People often ask her to locate mobile tickets purchased on a non-RTD app such as Uber, or to explain why mobile tickets have expired.
卡斯特罗, 太, now has all the information she needs on screens – far different from the days when she flipped through stacks of books and schedules to find answers. 在RTD工作了这么多年, 她说, 她没有什么艰难的决定, in terms of what she is asked to track down. “我知道这些信息，”卡斯特罗说. “I have all the information in my head, or I know where to find it. That’s one good thing about being here that long – there are some bus schedules I know off the top of my head.“她知道这个系统是如何运作的.
And while technology has changed, 卡斯特罗 thinks, people have not. “They are not good at adapting to change,”她说。. “这可能需要一段时间. But once they get used to it, they’ll be OK.”
随着RTD推出了更多的服务, 卡斯特罗 has guided customers through how to add those options to the choices they already had been using. One such example is the agency’s microtransit service, FlexRide, which has grown in use over time – and allows customers to consider bus lines that may not work for them without it. The service gives older people more flexibility to get out of the house, 她说: “I’ve talked to a lot of them who are saying it’s their lifeline, 他们的救命稻草. 而是让他们活下去.”
卡斯特罗 knows the RTD system from a customer perspective because she is a bus rider herself. She has taken the Route 19 to work throughout the pandemic, on some days the only customer on that trip. “It’s easy for me – and I mean it – when I say, ‘I know how you feel. That’s happened to me before,’”她说。. 卡斯特罗 has experienced what it feels like to be passed by because a bus is full.
Her perspective leads 卡斯特罗 to look at the system differently when she is not on it. She finds herself looking at bus stops when she drives around, studying who is waiting at certain places and thinking, “Maybe I talked to you this morning because you’re at the bus stop at the time you said you were going to be.“从城的这头到那头, 她说, knowing the landmarks around bus stops makes her job easier. 如果有人说, ‘I’m over here at Colfax and Colorado by the 7-Eleven,“我知道那家7- 11便利店在哪儿.”
The questions she answers, 卡斯特罗 said, have not changed much during the pandemic. People continue to ask about what services are running, and they wonder why masks are still required on public transportation when that’s not the case in other places.
The work has taught 卡斯特罗 that she is patient, calm and thick-skinned. She is a good listener, she thinks – a thought that her colleagues quickly affirm. And she doesn’t take her experience home, 她的生活以她丈夫为中心, two sons and eight grandchildren – and outdoor activities like fishing and camping. “I don’t take things personally, and I take criticism well,卡斯特罗说. “我被人从A到Z都骂过. if you take everything personally that they tell you, you wouldn’t last as long as I did in here.”
卡斯特罗’s satisfaction at work remains the same as the day she started: “Helping the people – and getting them to where they need to go the easiest way.”