PageOne, a leading critical messaging solutions company across the public and private sectors, today announced that the British transport company FirstGroup has responded to a 200% surge in demand for emergency buses during the mass floodings by deploying its Connect business SMS text messaging solution.

FirstGroup, which operates a quarter of Britain’s rail network, was able to use SMS to rapidly locate and deploy 1,500 rail replacement buses across the UK. The transport group used PageOne’s secure messaging service to dramatically reduce response times and target specific coach suppliers within a 20-mile radius of every storm-affected area, sending over 100,000 messages in just 14 days.

FirstGroup Commercial & Projects Manager Gareth Mead said:

“Using PageOne’s Connect solution has enabled our central control room to respond to reports of disruption anywhere in Britain and Ireland, and immediately contact emergency coach suppliers in each location within minutes of each incident. As soon as the storms hit, anticipated a massive increase in demand and looked to PageOne to address our communication needs. Targeting our SMS messages has not only helped us reduce the disruption to passenger journeys, but it has also cut the cost of responding to emergency call-outs by up to 40%.”

PageOne’s secure cloud-based solution Connect delivers fast, secure and resilient business SMS messaging to thousands of organisations across the UK, and worldwide. With no hardware or software to install and with a range of flexible service features, Connect offers organisations a reliable and efficient way to communicate with staff, mobile workers and other key stakeholders.

“Connect provides organisations with a powerful communications solution and we are delighted that the service has become integral to FirstGroup’s critical alerting strategy and emergency response,” says Nigel Gray, Director at PageOne. “When contacting and coordinating a highly-dispersed mobile workforce it’s imperative organisations can trust and depend on our messaging services. They particularly value the fact that, as soon as they get a call-out they can immediately initiate and co-ordinate the response.”