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Tolling Points

Generational Shift Creates a Different Tolling Experience

By: 
Bill Cramer
Category: 
Stories

From roadways to boardrooms, demographic change is sweeping the tolling industry, as members of Generations X and Y push their way into the work force and become ever more prominent as toll customers.

While each generation has its own experiences, culture, expectations, and communication style, participants at IBTTA’s New Media, Communications and Human Resources Workshop in Cleveland, Ohio heard there’s nothing new in generational change. And whether that change is challenging, exciting, or transformative will have everything to do with the way organizations react to it.

“The dynamics arising from generational differences have always been with us,” said Cleveland-based keynote speaker Jim Smith. “There’s nothing new here except that, now, we can tweet about it.”

Which means that, with the right response, tolling agencies can turn a potential challenge into a positive dialogue that creates new contact points for customers and learning moments for employees of all ages, while making the organization itself more nimble and effective.

Questioning Authority…Including Toll Authorities

Like past younger generations that have since grown decidedly older, many younger customers and employees want things to change. Right Now.

“One of the most annoying things about Millennials is that they’re so impatient. One of the gifts they bring to their organizations is that they’re so impatient,” Smith said. “By keeping all generations in the conversation, organizations can lean into the challenge and get the greatest benefit from employees of all ages.”

In the work force, Smith said Millennials will challenge the way a system like a customer service center is organized if it doesn’t make sense to them. “If you can justify what you’re doing, carry on,” he advised. “If you can’t, ask yourself whether their feedback can point toward a better way of doing things.”

On our roads, younger users are often the early adopters who embrace new innovations—from all-electronic tolling, to managed lanes, to mobile apps—becoming field testers (deliberately or not) for cutting-edge systems on their way to being mainstreamed. That makes Millennials a fabulous resource for any toll agency manager or executive who wants their agency to continue growing, evolving, and improving.

Change in the Wind

Smith said change is already on the agenda, as businesses and public agencies begin to rethink strategies that have been commonplace for decades. Spurred on by younger employees, organizations are moving beyond the annual performance review, a standard management practice that managers hated, employees resented, but everyone put up with.

The alternative—giving employees two minutes of feedback once a week, rather than a two-hour meeting once a year—may have originated with Generations X and Y. But it’s just as effective with longer-term employees, and models the attentiveness that every customer should be able to expect from their tolling provider. Faster feedback also makes organizations a lot more flexible, giving them a powerful tool to spot and solve problems more quickly.

Which, in the end, is what every agency wants when it sets out to build or manage a toll road, and what every driver expects when they start their daily commute.

 

 

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