Customer service at the TTC
February 4th, 2010 | by Shaun |Customer service has been a hot topic In Toronto, Canada over the last couple of weeks. The TTC - Toronto Transit Commission - has come under increasing public and media pressure for the levels of customer service being delivered by its 12,000 employees. The steady rumbling of discontent raised to a full-fledged outburst when a picture of a sleeping TTC fare collector was published on the internet a couple of weeks ago.
While I have yet to see anyone try and dispute the claims about the TTC’s customer service levels, I’ve probably already read a hundred news articles and blogs on what’s causing the problem and how it needs to be fixed. Most are overly simplistic, like “they just don’t get it and need more training,” or “fire the lot of them,” or “the whole TTC needs an overhaul.” Some are viewed through the lenses of agendas or social prejudices, like, “It’s the typical union mentality - they just don’t care,” or “It’s the management that’s created a poisonous atmosphere.” If only managing customer experience was really so simple….
This tsunami of opinions on the subject illustrates the biggest challenge every organization faces when attempting to establish “customer experience” as a deliverable core value. Customer service, like driving a car or making a cup of coffee, is something most people are comfortable expressing their opinions on. We’re all self-proclaimed experts, it seems, and we all think the answers are pretty straight forward. As someone who has spend the last twenty years working to help organizations improve their customer service, however, I can state without hesitation that the solutions to chronic service experience failures is never as straight-forward or simple as it seems.
One consultant was quoted as saying that he hopes they don’t try to fix it through training, as though training was a dirty word, or some kind of trivial waste of money. A Toronto professor was quoted as saying that the TTC needs to look at “best practices” in other organizations. One journalist decided that the TTC should model itself after Disney. These kinds of knee-jerk reactions are, to say the very least, unhelpful. For the TTC, or any organization, to truly become customer-centric, they need a systematic, strategic approach. The need to begin by reviewing their Structure, Processes and People. For each of these groups, they then have to answer the following four questions:
1. How easy are we to do business with?
2. How eager are we? (How much do we send the message we care?)
3. How enjoyable are we to do business with?
4. How rewarding are we to do business with?
These cut to the core of customer experience, and the answers will provide insight into what corrective actions will achieve the biggest wins.
It won’t be easy for them. A customer-focused culture doesn’t happen overnight. Quite frankly, if achieving world-class customer service was really as easy as most people thought, we would all be having a lot more pleasant experiences out there in the world. One thing is for sure - the TTC is hardly alone in their need to focus more on their customers.
