Customer service a sea change for TTC

It seems almost too easy these days to find fault with the TTC, and this latest embarrassment concerning the state of repair and cleanliness of the stations should prompt us to take a closer look at the root causes.

Iit wasn’t always this way and I remember as a child in the 1960s how exciting it was to travel downtown from Scarborough on the subway. The cars and stations were shiny and clean, and the drivers were polished and professional. It was a different era, of course, but something more than the passing of time and age have led us to our current situation.

Today, at the helm of the TTC are accountants, planners and engineers and the board of directors and its leadership are politicians. The public face of the corporation had been its general manager up until June of 2006, when as was stated, “political interference” from his commission overlords prompted Rick Ducharme to quit as chief general manager of the public transit commission.

So who is running the TTC today? The chairman, a politician is still there but in obvious turmoil so we’ll give him a pass. The general manager is a civil engineer who joined the commission early in his career and is the only GM to have been promoted to the position from within. He’s a company man, appears to understand the union culture and as far as we can tell (no wildcat strikes lately) labour unrest is in check under his leadership.

Recently, recognizing that the commission was experiencing public relations challenges he struck a "blue ribbon" panel led by a local hotelier to examine the problems and recommend solutions.

In my mind, this action of TTC brass reaching out for help from its customer base, the hospitality industry and private sector, to focus their attention on customer service was an important first step in admitting they don’t have the expertise to effectively address these important concerns.

Further, it appears the TTC may have lost sight of their reason for being – to provide quality service to its customers.

The TTC boasts one of the safest public transit systems in the world and the ratio of fare box revenue to operating costs is one of the best in North America -- if not the best.

For this we can thank the engineers and accountants, but we shouldn’t be surprised that a service led and managed by accountants and engineers isn’t customer focused. It’s not their fault; they don’t have the training nor are their brains wired to manage the complexities of operating a transit system from a customer perspective. This coupled with the fact that the TTC has been crying poor, and for good reason, for as long as I can remember.

Their corporate culture has lost the ability to dream.

Customer service challenges aside, what becomes really difficult to understand is how we could be investing billions of dollars expanding light rail across the city before we’ve addressed the state of repair of existing stations. I suspect the TTC has an answer for this and it will be interesting to learn how they respond to business leaders who are growing increasingly frustrated by an organization that seems to have forgotten they’re supposed to be the "Better Way."

About Lorenzo Mele

Comments

[M Clement Hall]

Why not restrict direction of the TTC to those who actually use it? Eliminate the directors who are driven in limousines at taxpayer expense -- eliminate those who haven't been inside a streetcar since they were children.

[paulf416]

Service? just last night I entered summerhill station, as I showed my metro pass to the collector I noticed she didn't even lift her eyes from the book she was reading. Great sevice

[TTC Daily Rider]

I recently noticed a TTC employee (or someone wearing a TTC uniform) walk into the back doors of the 506 street car while everyone else waited there turn through the front. Then this individual pick up an old metro to read during the ride but before getting off he discard the paper between the seats.

Guess he was off duty to clean up is someone else job.

[Randy]

Yes back in the late 1990's and early 2000's TTC decided it wanted to save money and instead of cutting Ceo's wages etc. what they did was reduce the cleaning staff in half for the subway stations. It used tobe that there was a janitor pretty much for every 3 stations and he would start his shift at one move to the next overnight then on to the third by morning and some stations had a janitor all night. Now we are down to one janitor for every 5 stations, they are basiclly to collect the garbage, mop up any spills they see at that time and move on, long gone are the janitors who over night washed walls, cleaned esclators, scrubbed staircases. It was just not only Rick Ducharme who had the issue with government intervention but David Gunn who helped turned the TTC around for sometime also left with the same opinion. Every since the TTC commissioner's (6 in total) were change to all politicians from 3 public and 3 politcians the TTC has gone down hill. Howard Moscoe also did alot of damage to the TTC and that has yet to be addressed or fixed.

[Harvey Rotrand]

This article doesn't mention the realities of Toronto. We all want great public transit, but won't pay for it! The poorest people in the city are asked to fund almost 100% of the operating costs of the TTC through the fare box.

Imagine if the city tried to toll us for the real cost of the road infrastructure needed for our cars. We would revolt.

We are simply spoiled, and the TTC can do nothing about it. TTC employees will continue to take the brunt of our tantrums for the failings we have brought upon them.

[Alex]

lol - Yeah. Blame the engineers and the accountants. Anyone but ourselves.

[Sandra]

It likely doesn't help that the TTC is run by accountants and engineers rather than people with backgrounds in customer service, but that's hardly the problem. Somewhere along the line the TTC started hiring individuals who don't live in Toronto, don't like Toronto or Torontonians and they are especially hostile to those of us who take the buses and subways. They look down on us -- it shows in their viciousness, and hostility -- and can't wait til the end of their shift to return to "big garage land," Vaughn, Barrie, wherever. The antisocial staff must go, and to do that the union must be eliminated. There's no panacea, no magic bullet that management can bite to solve the problem, because management is not the problem. It's the employees.

[pierre martin]

A friend who joined the TTC 5 years ago said that the TTC really emphasized customer-service during the hiring and training process. While most TTC recruits retain this positive attitude, it may fade with a few 'old-hands' who know that the union will back them: Right or wrong.
As the management culture tries to instill customer service, the protective union attitude erodes this. Recall the union boss' immediate excuse for the napping fare-taker.
To be fair, many drivers will politely respond to a 'good morning'.

[Tom]

Accountants and engineers? I'm sure the lack of service has nothing whatsoever to do with the entitlement felt by the unionized employees...

[Alex]

Engineers and accountants build and run the world. An outfit that suddenly decides to concentrate on service is in the last stages of collapse.

Be neither nihilistic nor service-touchy-feely about the TTC. Did they get you there? That is the question, and all too often the answer is NO.

[Rick]

Dreams don't add money to a cash starved company. not enough janitors to clean cars and stations that are to old to be in service anyway.

[Mike]

The government - municipal, provincial and federal - need to get off their hands and start funding Toronto and it's infrastructure in proportion to the amount of tax money it feeds the system each year. Putting the burden back on citizens to the point of over-extension is not the answer. Raising property tax is not the answer if the added money is not spent on the people putting it I to the governments bank account. This contiuned bleeding of citizens for a couple of bucks here, a percentage increase there will and should cause nothing but civil unrest.

[jamesforest]

This article completely missed it. The #1 reason for poor customer service is UNIONS. That bus driver who decided to stop his bus and have a coffee break while the riders sat said it best: "Complain all you want. I can't be fired - I'm union!". Touché.

[David K]

TTC employees are a far better paid than most, and yet they still don't want to have to provide the service they are being paid to provide, and don't take any respon. Unfortunately, when no one does anything to make the situation better, the front line employees will get the brunt, but again, you're being paid well to provide CUSTOMER SERVICE. The entire TTC is based on customer service, but for some reason, they seem to think that since there is no alternative, we have to deal with whatever they want to dish out as "service". With the amount of media & talk over the last few months surrounding the TTC & poor service, the next logical step would be to clean up the system and improve the service.....not move onto another multi-million dollar project at the tax payers expense...fix the problem you currently have before creating a mess of new ones! We should not have a panel of politicians and engineers heading up the TTC - there neds to be an "average Joe Public" or two to speak to the customer prospective. Maybe if the TTC wasn't unionized and the possibility of job/wage loss was at stake, for both workers & management, the TTC employees might actually DO SOMETHING to restore the system that once was a pride of the city....and if not, REPLACE them with NEW people that DO want the job and would do the job right.

[TorontoNewbie]

They will spend millions and millions to build an expressway to your front door, but with won't throw another dime to fix a leak. These governments need to get their heads on straight.

[Peter]

Speaking of repairs: How long does it take the TTC to repair 2 broken floor tiles? 8 monhts!!! And it's not 8 months of doing nothing, than repairing them within a day. It's 8 monhts of actual 'work' in progress. I'm talking about the floor at Finch station (next to the token booth on the way to the bus terminal). They actually had the area barricaded for 8 months, and I saw someone 'work' on repairing the tiles every once in a while. Now I guess it's 'done', because the barricade has been taken down, but it was obviously not important for them to finish the job properly, because it still kind of looks like a job that's only almost done.

[cie]

I have retired after spending 36 years back and forth on the TTC. Yes, those were good times. Just yesterday, I was downtown returning my senior tickets for new ones and was told that only a money refund would be made. Wouldnt it be a better idea for the TTC to exchange the tickets with the additional charge that one would have to pay,. But no, they actually give you a refund. Why would the TTC want to lose revenue? Makes sense??? Now the other side - rude TTC workers. While I was in the line up, one employee had two heated arguments with customers. It was a good thing the gentleman was behind a glass enclosure, because I think one of the ladies would have clobbered him if she could only get a chance.

[Rob]

No matter how much money you put in it, no matter how you distribute the blame for it, TTC will continue to be a money pit until you can run it like a company that has to produce profits, results, and try to be more efficient with all of its resources - fuels, stations and personnel every single year.

For those of you who think that the Feds should dump even more money into it, go to New Delhi. They've got a subway system that's light years ahead of ours.

I bet if you suggested efficiencies or private sector participation, Bob Kinnear will throw his feces on the floor.

[Ian K]

I am deeply offended by the wide-ranging assumptions made in this article. First off, I am a mathematics student. Secondly, I have a minor in music, am planning on pursuing a degree in law, have taken extensive business courses and have worked 2 years in customer service.

So when you say "let's face it, their brains are not wired to deal with customers", you make the hilarious and uneducated assumption that people with engineering/accounting designations do not know how to do anything else.

[Guardian Aspect]

Don't blame the engineers -- if laypeople knew what goes into training an engineer these days, they wouldn't be so quick to jump to outdated stereotype of calculator-toting bookworms with no interpersonal skills. The fact is, collaboration with other engineers as well as other professions is heavily emphasized in the modern engineering curriculum. Reaching out to the experts from the hospitality industry demonstrates one of the virtues of the properly educated engineer: and it's no new thing -- the famous engineer Van Horne recognized the value of the customer experience when he first outfitted the Canadian Pacific Railway over 100 years ago. With our technical aptitude combined with complex project management experience and ability to see the "big picture", an engineer is definitely someone you would like to see at the helm of the TTC. All we need is to be unfettered by petty politics and union foot-dragging.

[Paul]

The assumption that a customer service culture has to come from the top down is entirely false, and is a counterproductive way of thinking about this problem. This type of culture starts and ends with the TTC frontline workers. An engineer or an accountant would never engage directly with a rider. Customer service is something that needs to come from the bottom up.

Right now there is no reason why the unionized frontline workers would ever give a damn about the people who actually use the service. They make a huge amount of money including a healthy pension paid for by the taxpayers, and they are essentially untouchable (can't be fired). There is literally no incentive, other than goodwill, for them to care at all.

[Logan]

@Mike

Do you really think that the 'lack of funding' from the Provincial and Federal Governments is the problem?

Take a look at the Union Wages and think again.

[Tim]

Automate everything that can possibly be automated. Fare dispensing and collection, the subways, all of it. Normally I'm against automation as a job killer, but far too many of the people who work at the TTC are not earning their keep, and we can no longer afford to overpay them. The union isn't going away - they are too entrenched and have far too many friends on city council - so we will simply have to find a way to do without their members.

[tbayer]

Surprise, surprise. The media has begun to dig into the problem at the TTC. Most of their coverage has focused on the unionized employees and placed blame on them. It is not the unionized employees who are the problem. It is the TTC management. Ask any good lawyer in Ontario who specializes in Employment Standards and Labour Law and they will tell you the management causes all the problems. Management spends their day squandering tax payer money on lawyers and mediators. Why? Because all they do is fight with the union and their employees. I am not an employee of the TTC no have I ever been, though I have worked for a couple of transit systems in this country. I am aware of what it is like to work in a system run by an engineer. They are not qualified to run a transit system. Most engineers lack people skills, notions of employment standards, and customer service. (The manager of the system I worked for had NEVER been in a transit bus his entire life). So why are engineers running transit systems. Well, if you ever specialized in city politics like I did in university you may have a clue. The biggest power city politicians have is land zoning. And who would be interested in zoning? Developers, construction contractors, engineers, architects, real estate companies, etc. Who provides city politicians with campaign funding----many of the above. Who provides these politicians with employment opportunities after they leave politics? Probably many of the above people. Do you get the picture now????

[A TTC Victim]

It was a Friday after 6 PM after a long week. I got off the train and went outside for designated bus area. I walked to the edge of sidewalk to peek at the coming bus. I have not left the premises. As I walk back, two big guys smelling alcohol I mean it was strong smell and this was during the Olympics. So they were drinking.

One of the guy put a hand on my chest and said I cannot board the bus. He showed me a TTC employee batch. He claimed I walked from the sidewalk to bus waiting area. I politely said I just came from inside the terminal and I am still in the designated bus area. I also mentioned I took the train and I am not monthly pass holder to show monthly pass. They asked for a bus transfer. I said when you come out of the train you don’t need to punch and print transfer.

As the bus pulls in, the guys were firm that they will not let me board the bus. So, I was mad. I said to the guy, a) you are drunk b) you do not have TTC uniform c) I am honest person coming home after a long day. I knew then If I try and force myself to board the bus there would be altercations and there is no way I could have fought with two over 240 LBS 6-4 guys. So I called 911 for help. At the time I knew I was in harms way if I try to walk closer to the bus. I had never before felt this way before. I kept thinking why why and more why’s. The TTC guy doing this to me.

I went to the booth and asked the person to call TTC supervisor. The men boarded the bus but the bus did not move until those men exited the bus. The TTC employee walked to the TTC booth and told the lady that I was walking from the street and forcing myself to board the buys. He even showed her the TTC employee batch.

I waited for the police to arrive because I felt my rider ship rights, pride, honesty, everything was hurt. The men waited for another bus and even after my request to stick around for the COPS to come, they left. The irony is the Police never showed up, the TTC supervisor never came and I waited for an hour.

Had the TTC Supervisor and Police arrived to question the TTC drunken employees, I knew I had a case to fight for my rights. That did not happen so I have a pro choice to make.

I have promised myself never to take TTC again. So much for customer respect let alone any service.