Do Rail Customers Exist?
To say that I hate the way that the railways have changed announcements from “passengers” to “customers” would be overly strong, but I do think it unfortunate.
I note that on planes, ferries and buses we are still passengers. Was the change from passenger to customer made with the idea to encourage railway employees to focus their minds on the travelling public’s needs and wants? If it was; then changing one word does not do it.
I did not travel on the train in this country until I was an adult. To my family and friends “taking the train” meant using the underground (or the tube as some people call it). Most of our journeys on the underground were above ground and even when underground they were “cut and cover” so the word “tube” seemed strange to us. The national railways were another world altogether.
As a child entering the concourse of a major London terminus was a bewildering experience (usually to collect or deliver relations). Unlike the trains that I was used to, which had their motors underneath their carriages; these trains had separate engines – powered by steam when I was very young, but later by smelly diesels or diesel electrics. The choice of destinations was overwhelming. The choice of platforms was confusing. How could anyone know where to go or what to do?
Later, as an adult, I spent a couple of years commuting to work. By then I knew, as every commuter does, the times of all my trains, which ones stopped where and what platform they left from. I could, and perhaps often did, travel in an automatic mode. But the sense that the railways are uninviting never left me.
If we were really customers – in that there was a real market in train travel – I believe our experience would be very different.
There are not, for example, several stations in Reading with trains to London, so there is no competition. There is no innate driving force to attract customers from a rival.
Given that there is not a market stall sense of competition, train operators have to work harder to attract customers. They have to put themselves in the position of someone about to make a journey and how they can encourage them to take the train. Except in rare cases, this has not happened. Why not? Because most people who use the train do so because they feel they are forced to. Simply put: most journeys in Britain begin or end in London and because congestion is so bad in London (except in the congestion charging zone) and parking so expensive – they take the train.
Now the train operators believe that they have more customers than they can cope with, they are less inclined to give more thought to making train travel a pleasant experience in order to retain their existing customers and attract new ones.
We are still customers in name only.
Previous article: Skyride (Friday, 25th September, 2009)
Comments
Do Rail Customers exist
I cannot see that a passenger is an any sense a customer ..My understanding is that a customer, at least in the past , was subject to the legal rule, 'Caveat emptor' or ' Buyer beware'. This I believe, gave the customer an element of responsibility for the outcome of his purchase. I would imagine that the passenger on the Clapham omnibus would be most annoyed to be told he was in some measure responsible for his own fate. My cynical guess would be that rail companies are trying to shuffle off their responsibility here. I agree that it is most annoying.
taking the train
As it happens Reading is one of the few places that does have two different Companies with services to London: South West Trains and First Great Western.
However the main point is that railways have plenty of competition! They're called cars, buses, planes etc.
The issue of 'customers' v 'passengers' is a typically British problem.
Some bright spark thought it would imply greater emphasis on 'customer service'.
Of course,as we all know, this is rubbish and I suspect in a few years we'll all be passengers again.
I dont think everybody uses trains because they have to.
Many, including myself, love them and would rather travel by train than any other way.
Unfortunately, our present Train Operating Companies seem hell-bent on making our journeys as expensive and uncomfortable as possible: something to do with lack of capacity!
Being a train customer
One of the ideas behind rail privatisation was surely to generate competition between companies. If I want to go from London to Glasgow, for instance, I do have a choice - between Virgin up the west coast main line or British Rail (formerly NXEC) via Edinburgh. But such choice is, as Andrew Davis points out, pretty rare. From Newcastle, where I live, I do actually have a choice if I'm going to London: I could go via Sunderland and take the quaintly old-fashioned Grand Central, the one railway company to have a simple and intelligible pricing structure. But they are much slower, and reportedly less reliable, than the East Coast mainline. If I'm going to Birmingham I have to go on Arriva Cross Country, which in my experience is now far worse than when the route was operated by Virgin: and if I'm going to visit my friends in Cornwall, much more expensive too. I can't find any fares to match Air South West's £39 single including luggage, from Newcastle direct to Newquay in an hour or so. So sorry, but I'm flying, and buying carbon offset where I can (one of the good features of EasyJet is you can buy carbon offset with your ticket - not the same as not flying at all, but still better than nothing). Oh, and while I'm on about it, don't ever think that the plane's going anyway. There used to be four flights a day from Newcastle to Brussels: now Eurostar is so easy for us Northerners, there is only one flight a day nowadays, so going by train really has cut down the plane emissions!