Comparison of poor customer service staffing/training/standards on the railway with other industries

[AdamWW]

Moderator note: Split from

Interrail - Staff denied access to platform, then tried to throw us off train!

at the age of 85 its unlikely, but one thing I have learned is that it’s best to be a bit forgiving unless you yoursellf are a paragon of virtue Ex railway then, or failing that, certainly ex buses as your contempt for passengers was stated in another thread. No ordinary member if the public...

www.railforums.co.uk

The problem is it's a low-paid job. If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

I do wonder about this.

This is going back a bit, but the Kwik Save budget supermarkets in the UK saved money by using shelf stickers for prices rather than individual labels and in the absence of bar code scanners the cashiers had to memorise the price of every item they sold.

Now I don't know how much they paid their staff, but I suspect that they weren't on enormous salaries - it was after all a budget chain.

If you can get cashiers to do that, how hard could it actually be to train staff on the basics of rail ticketing (e.g. what's off peak depends on the ticket not the service, break of journey is allowed on flexible tickets and you can continue on a different day etc.....)?

So I am beginning to think that the problem is not in fact low pay for the customer facing staff, it's an industry that won't (or maybe can't) spend sufficient money on training staff and testing their knowledge in order for them to do their jobs.

 

[35B]

I do wonder about this.

This is going back a bit, but the Kwik Save budget supermarkets in the UK saved money by using shelf stickers for prices rather than individual labels and in the absence of bar code scanners the cashiers had to memorise the price of every item they sold.

Now I don't know how much they paid their staff, but I suspect that they weren't on enormous salaries - it was after all a budget chain.

If you can get cashiers to do that, how hard could it actually be to train staff on the basics of rail ticketing (e.g. what's off peak depends on the ticket not the service, break of journey is allowed on flexible tickets and you can continue on a different day etc.....)?

So I am beginning to think that the problem is not in fact low pay for the customer facing staff, it's an industry that won't (or maybe can't) spend sufficient money on training staff and testing their knowledge in order for them to do their jobs.

Cashiers learning a relatively small number of specific prices, almost certainly set in a policy making them easy to remember, are a different beast from a complex series of rules that require judgment to be applied correctly.

That does mean a focus on staff training, but also on creating a genuine customer service culture - something sadly difficult to combine with a role that is about enforcement.

 

[AdamWW]

Cashiers learning a relatively small number of specific prices, almost certainly set in a policy making them easy to remember, are a different beast from a complex series of rules that require judgment to be applied correctly.

Sorry but I don't buy that at all.

There are some simple rules that could be put on a small laminated card, including:

Whether or not a ticket is valid on a particular train depends on the restriction code for the ticket - there is no such thing as a "peak train"
It is not an offence to be on a train at a time a ticket isn't valid for - the railway's only contractual remedy is to charge the appropriate excess.
Walk-up tickets permit break of journey except where prohibited by a restriction code.
Once a journey has started it does not have to be continued on the same day.
Journeys with a walk-up ticket can be started and finished at any intermediate station unless break of journey is prohibited.

These rules are not complex.
There is no judgement required.
They are logical and it cannot be harder to learn them than the price of every product in a supermarket.

And yet I know from personal experience never mind what I've read here that it is not rare to find staff who do not understand these rules.

Just because the system overall is complex doesn't excuse the railway for not training staff in the fundamental rules.

I don't expect staff to memorise all the restriction codes. I should be able to expect them not to refuse to sell me an off peak ticket before 9:30 without them looking at what the restriction actually is.