Dispatcherr
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Moderator note: Split from another thread
The real legends are the front facing customer roles!
The real legends are the front facing customer roles!
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Should behind-the-scenes staff be given frontline/customer-facing experience?
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R
RailUK Forums
I have every time for the social media bods. People can be absolutely vile to them seeing the screen as a dividing line. I know the majority of ours and they're committed people who do really want to help, and often have front line experience to boot.
Dispatcherr
On Moderation
They should all have customer experience before going into such a role and I mean customer experience in that industry/company for a couple years, sadly that's not the case at SR!
Depends if you can find such people who want to do such a job - plus such experience is somewhat frozen the moment the individual leaves the job.
To be fair you hear a lot of nonsense from front line people who should know better - we all know a ticket inspector or two who will die on the hill of a rule that is actually complete nonsense for example.
I do however agree they should have a decent shadowing policy to experience how things are before they start work, as well as decent quality reference material - though the railway is notoriously crap at sticking to things like "lines to take" aka singing from the same hymn sheet which are standard the world over.
Where I am there are various ex traincrew, station staff etc in these roles alongside new starters. They also don't mind getting the odd (polite) pointer if they do get things wrong which is good.
Why is that any different to being a dispatcher off the street?
Dispatcherr
On Moderation
That's fair mate, agree with that and it's good your company have taken on people with somewhat experience already will go along way in that job for sure.
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What do you mean sorry ?
Why should they have customer facing experience in the industry before taking on the role? I’ve done that job and I don’t agree, although you do need the right people with the correct interests, and give them the opportunity to see the business at large.
Dispatcherr
On Moderation
Agree! They hide behind the typed up statements and emails and don't face the music!
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So you walked straight into a social media officer job ? And if you did... Do you not think experience on the front line would of benefited you ? At SR it's about who you know and not what you know to get a job at Atrium court...old pals act!
GusB
Established Member
Everyone has to start somewhere. How do you gain experience if nobody gives you a job in such a role? You should also consider that many people are employed by agencies these days and they're not given the opportunity to build up experience in a particular field; it's not necessarily the fault of the employee if they're shunted about from one job to another.
Anyone who deals with customers directly is "front line", whether it be answering phones or social media enquiries; you don't have to be on a platform or in a ticket office.
I'm all for getting people out of the office and experiencing different areas of the business that they work for but it's not always possible and it's certainly not necessary. I've been involved in various customer service roles over the years and it'd be silly (as well as being prohibitively expensive) to ensure that all front-line staff have experience of each role.
It is necessary to have systems that allow information to be passed from one team to another so that, in the event of any disruption, customers and colleagues alike are properly informed about what's going on. It's not fair to turn round and point the finger at one particular team and say they're rubbish if they haven't been given the correct information in the first place.
Have you enquired about doing a spell in the contact centre?
Without first working in a job which was face to face with railway customers like being gateline or dispatching? Yes.
Not especially. There are lots of good social media employees on TOCs who didn’t get there from a front line position. You can do shadowing to understand some of the realities of running a train service anyway.
m0ffy
Member
A lot of “behind the scenes” staff are going to be specialists in their field. While I think it’s useful for all employees to visit the frontlines of the companies they work for, I’m not convinced it’s beneficial for HR or finance staff (for example) to be required to serve time as station personnel.
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