‘Hip’ new SEPTA Key site is one of many fixes in the works

This story originally appeared on PlanPhilly.

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I barely remember what I did to open an account and register my SEPTA Key card on the agency’s newborn beta site. The interface was intuitive, quick and simple — nothing out of the ordinary for a modern website. But in this case, nothing out of the ordinary feels pretty extraordinary.

SEPTA launched the Key card — the so-called “future of fare payment” — in 2016 with a notoriously user-unfriendly website prone to malfunction. Immediately, people began complaining about the interface for buying the plastic fare cards.

During a single week in July of 2017, 17,487 calls were made to a customer service line SEPTA set up to handle questions about the Key system. Hundreds of more complaints specifically about the online portal for buying the fare cards went to the agency’s general customer service line, agency officials told PlanPhilly in 2017.

A year and a half later, that product design nightmare maybe moving toward a close with the launch of the beta site on Friday and the continuing work on a number of other fixes to the system’s e-commerce platform.

“They say that it’s much more responsive,”  said Carla Showell-Lee, a spokeswoman for SEPTA. “It’s much more fresh. It’s more hip. Those are the type of responses that we’re getting. So we want that to continue.”

SEPTA’s beta site answers longstanding user complaints by providing increased compatibility with multiple devices and platforms, and more seamless e-commerce functions. It’s easier to manage accounts, access trip history and load fares on the refreshed site and SEPTA added help and information sections for lingering issues, Showell-Lee said.

“This is really SEPTA trying to listen to what our customers’ needs are and this was definitely on our list of priorities,” she said.

Listening didn’t come cheap for the cash-strapped agency. The latest round of improvements to the system’s online portal came as part of a $2.9 million package of improvements and maintenance work contracted out to Conduent, the New Jersey-headquartered technology services company hired by SEPTA to implement Key.

SEPTA expects that investment in the smartcard system will ultimately pay off, with the agency making more money from fares through a modern digital interface than it could through its old token and cash-driven system.

But the costs of Key’s rollout continues to grow. SEPTA decided to increase its budget for Key implementation to $297.77 million last year. That figure represents a nearly $30 million increase over the prior year’s spending projection and $122 million more than the $175 million cost SEPTA estimated after selecting the project’s main contractor.

I’m tearing up at how easy the new https://t.co/KJgmj7MEwc is. It’s finally mobile friendly 😩😩 i’ve never been happier with a website upgrade in my life. Good job @SEPTAKey and thank you @SEPTA_SOCIAL for passing on our complaints

— bird (@birrdcage) March 19, 2019