Chris Selley: Forget ‘customer service.’ Make the trains run on time
August 24, 2010 – 2:57 pm
My major complaint about the report the Toronto Transit Commission’s Customer Service Advisory Panel released yesterday is how much it focuses on customer service. (Hey, I didn’t say it was a fair complaint.) The 11 civic-minded volunteer members of the panel — who clearly mean well, I must stress — include the general manager of a downtown Toronto hotel, the vice-president of “people relations and culture” (ugh, really?) at WestJet, a marketing professor, the CEO of a marketing firm, and someone who’s in charge of “loyalty and retention” for a telephone company, of all things. They’ve come up with recommendations that range from obviously essential to downright dumb. But fundamentally, I just think they were working on a false premise. The TTC’s customer service crisis is largely a symptom, not the disease.
It’s not surprising given the complement of the panel, but it’s frustrating how much time the report spends worrying about the TTC’s “brand” — its “image” — in abstraction. It recommends an “audit … to explore the current state of the TTC image/brand from the perspective of the customer. This information can act as a foundation to plan future marketing campaigns.” But the TTC isn’t a brand to be marketed like Pepsi, Wendy’s or Indigo. They’re trying to convince you to drink a certain cola, eat a certain burger, buy books at a certain place. The TTC is a take it or leave it proposition. All it is is the service it provides, and no amount of brand enhancement will alter the fundamental public transit calculation: if it can be counted on to get me from Point A to Point B in an acceptable length of time, at an acceptable price and in an acceptable degree of comfort, I will use the service.
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It’s not surprising given the complement of the panel, but it’s frustrating how much time the report spends worrying about the TTC’s “brand” — its “image” — in abstraction. It recommends an “audit … to explore the current state of the TTC image/brand from the perspective of the customer. This information can act as a foundation to plan future marketing campaigns.” But the TTC isn’t a brand to be marketed like Pepsi, Wendy’s or Indigo. They’re trying to convince you to drink a certain cola, eat a certain burger, buy books at a certain place. The TTC is a take it or leave it proposition. All it is is the service it provides, and no amount of brand enhancement will alter the fundamental public transit calculation: if it can be counted on to get me from Point A to Point B in an acceptable length of time, at an acceptable price and in an acceptable degree of comfort, I will use the service.
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