TTC Customer (Lip) Service
Things have been rather quiet here over the past month, so I thought I would write a post about the TTC’s customer service given the events of the past few weeks. What prompted me to write this was a comment made by John Tory on his NewsTalk 1010 show. He spent a half hour on the latest situation, where a rider made a video of a TTC driver taking a seven minute washroom/coffee break. At the end of the topic, Tory made about five suggestions aimed at TTC management, employees, and the union, as well as at the public at large. For the most part, these were very constructive suggestions. However, his last suggestion was aimed at the public and encouraged the documenting and reporting of issues. That suggestion was also constructive in so far as encouraging reporting incidents to the TTC’s customer service department. I took issue with the second part of that suggestion, where Tory asked for a halt to sending photos and videos to the media, primarily because “we” are all too tired of these.
There is a small truth to this, as is the case for just about any story that surfaces in this 24-hour-news-at-any-moment environment. I am not so sure that anyone should be thinking twice about sending the details, with photos and videos if available, to the media. Personally, for far too long I, and I suspect that much of the public, have found that complaints to the TTC simply fall upon deaf ears, or worse, insincere ears that are only there to pretend to pat one on the back and say, “there there.” In some recent news stories, some people being interviewed have indicated that they even experienced what they called rudeness from the complaint line.
I believe that the public’s lack of faith that the TTC can or will actually do something about complaints has been brewing sometime. Combined with instances of poor service, we had a powder keg waiting to be ignited, and the recent fare increase along with the way it was handled, has set it off. This leaves the TTC with very poor credibility when it comes to saying that they will listen to complaints.
This all takes me back to 1996 when my faith in the TTC’s ability to deal with complaints effectively was lost. I had an incident on a bus where the driver appeared to be somewhere else as he started missing requested stops. To be fair, at that time, newer buses had a ’stop requested’ light on the dash board to remind the driver, and the bus in question was an older bus that did not have this. Fortunately, this meant that as a passenger, I could ring the bell as often as needed, as I did not intend to walk back from another stop. My bigger concern, which is why I decided to complain, is with the safety issue of a driver not paying full attention to the job at hand. I called the TTC to get the mailing address and give a brief description of the problem. They were very courteous and said they would look into the matter.
Here is the letter I wrote. I have blanked out the address, even though I haven’t lived there in nearly a decade.
About two weeks later, I received this response. It indicated that a review would be done with the operator in question. I never heard anything further in the matter. I didn’t need to know any personal details about the operator, but it would have been nice to know what sort of actions were taken to assure that this does not get to be a regular occurrence. If the operator was having some issue in his life, what efforts was the TTC making to assist?
I have an idea of what reviewing a complaint or incident with an operator involves. The operator is contacted and an interview is scheduled for the operator, and a union representative if the operator wants one, to come in to be questioned about the incident. They go through the details of the complaint and get the operator’s recollection of it. A conclusion is determined which either involves telling the operator that they either followed proper procedure or they did not follow proper procedure. The latter likely involves something being written up for their file and the are told what amounts to a “don’t do it again”. Even if that is all that occurred, it would have been nice to see if something was done.
Even though I have little faith that the TTC can provide proper customer service, I have a bit of understanding where they are coming from. I heard a statistic the other day that the most common complaint they receive is when someone is required to pay the full fare. Imagine that: people being upset that they have to pay the same as everyone else! I know of an operator who, instead of just saying ‘no’ to the customer, he used the PA on the bus to ask for opinions of other people on the bus, “Attention passengers, we have an individual who wishes to board without paying the same fare you all had to pay. Should I allow him on?”
This same operator has been called in, though not for doing that. One case was in a situation where service was backed up and buses began bunching. Being the lead bus packed full with passengers, he chose not to stop unless someone on board needed to exit. Common sense would suggest this is a good idea as it will help to restore the proper spacing of the service, and the people waiting at stops would be boarding a less crowded bus only a minute or two later, but someone called in a complaint. According to policy, the operator should have stopped at each stop where there were people waiting for a bus, open the door and explain to them that they could not board.
Like that will stop them from boarding. So, TTC policy is to operate in a way that will sustain bunching of vehicles. Is it any wonder why the public has just about given up on their ability to provide meaningful customer service, let alone meaningful transit service?
February 7th, 2010 at 11:38 am
The following is being issued on Saturday to all TTC employees by Chief General Manager, Gary Webster
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Our customers deserve better
February 6, 2010
I don’t know about you, but I am becoming increasingly tired of defending the reputation of the TTC; tired of explaining what is acceptable and what is not; and tired of stating the obvious: that much of the behaviour being reported is, indeed, unacceptable.
You have heard me say that I am proud of the TTC. I still am, but I am not proud of what we have been dealing with over the last several weeks.
Two weeks ago I said that the vast majority of TTC employees care about the organization and do a good job, but we can all do better. I asked everyone to respond well. Some of you did. Clearly, some of you did not.
We all have to accept responsibility for allowing the TTC to drift into a culture of unacceptable operating discipline. In other words, we have deemed it acceptable for some employees to not do all aspects of their jobs.
We have two choices. We can continue to react to issues, deal with individual employee problems, and hope that the rest of our employees get the message, behave themselves and not get caught doing something they should not be doing.
The other choice, and the one we are going to take, is a much broader approach. Expectations need to be clear, especially for frontline employees. And employees need to be held accountable for their poor performance.
We are in the customer service business, but some of the behaviour our customers have encountered recently would suggest otherwise. Our customers pay a fare and the City provides hundreds of millions of dollars every year to the TTC. This public transit agency belongs to the very people we serve.
As Chief General Manager, I am ultimately accountable to our customers. As employees, you – and you alone – are accountable for your actions. The culture of complacency and malaise that has seeped into our organization will end. I hold all of management responsible to make this happen. Reviews and plans are under way to address systemic issues regarding customer service, but real change starts with you.
Gary Webster
Chief General Manager