Amtrak onboard personnel variability

Thanks for these responses (particularly Mr. Norman and Mr. Moore).

I wonder how much revenue Amtrak loses due to poor customer service.

For my near-weekly commute, the Crescent’s schedule (in one direction) works well, and I like being able to walk to and from the stations. But the crew is sometimes so abrasive and hostile that I am flying from now on. That’s over $15,000 in revenue that Amtrak is. It getting due to its staff.

Amtrak also seems to have a relatively high number of employees, both at the station and onboard, compared to other railroads. That seems to be the worst of all worlds: if I had fewer interactions with Amtrak crew members, I’d be happier. If Amtrak would reduce its onboard staff by half, eliminating the worst performers, but increase the pay of those who remain by half, it would be better; Amtrak would save money and it would have better crew and higher customer satisfaction.

Greg Moore wrote: ↑Fri Oct 28, 2022 9:57 pm Now that all said, yeah I think customers have probably gotten worse over the years. And there's probably only so much crap employees will put up with (I'll still give credit to the conductor's reaction when I showed him the feces covered bathroom. He handled that about as well as anyone could

One thing that think is related to the problem, but not THE problem is "unions". Yes, I suspect some employees hide the behind the fact that they've got a union protecting them. But, airlines are heavily unionized and as some have noted, some have great customer service. I would often fly Southwest and while many don't like it because of its boarding, etc, I found on pretty much every flight, the customer service was consistently good.

It had to be expected that this public contact topic was going to devolve into a discussion of airline related affairs, but I hope the Moderators will allow such leeway.

No question whatever, airlines do deliver a very consistent customer service "product" - Amtrak is not even in the same ballpark. Much as this results from the "six hour over and done" conditions rather than the fifty hours which can be the case with an Amtrak journey.

But I would think that so much of the difficulties confronting any public contact employee in any industry is the level of rudeness that is tolerated in public settings today. No doubt, I have been guilty of such myself, but I like to think I have sufficient self-control to avoid such in public venues where you can be ejected without any kind of "due process" or behind the wheel where safety, mine and others, is endangered. Wish same could be said of others.

No so far as alcohol being served in-flight or on-board, may as well just keep doing it. After all, there are plenty of "planeside" outlets that are happy to accommodate passengers such as the one who wanted to pick a fight - with Mike Tyson no less.

Now finally and on the airlines (but hold on; could Amtrak also soon be included??), Southwest is on my "no fly list". Even if, as Mr. Moore notes, their "cattle Shute" boarding process is not enough, the killer to me is that all too often, they turn the safety briefing into some kind of comic skit. That can even have an Attendant "hiding" then popping out with some trite comment such as "hope you were all taking notes; there will be a pop quiz later!!!"

In fact, a neighbor who recently moved was once an on-air features reporter with the Fox Dallas outlet. She became an "Attendant for the day" with Southwest, and they had her hiding in an overhead bin (small girl; weighed probably 110) where she popped out to say something like "hope you all listening". I'm sure the whole thing was staged, but to make such a mockery of the safety briefing is why SWA is a "no fly".

Gilbert B Norman wrote: ↑Fri Oct 28, 2022 4:15 pm Mr. Naugy, your immediate reminds me of a regional fast food chain ( Portillo's) around my parts that has signage (to the effect of) at their order point:

Our employees are our family, and that's how we treat them. Please join us

It's a shame that companies even need to have signs like that. It's not even like I expect smiles and abundance of kindness, just simple things like "Please" "Thank you" "You're welcome". Fortunately I don't work in a corporate chain where those employees are under high stress all the time, but still, some regular common courtesy would be nice.

Also, off topic, I really wish Portillo's would open some locations in the Northeast. Chicago beef and a cake shake sound delightful, haha.

Greg Moore wrote:
I think Amtrak suffers from a few issues:
While I understand Amtrak has service training and the like, Amtrak seems to suffer from two things:
1) A consistent level of service. Consistency has a LOT going for it.
2) A corporate policy of making it a high priority. Some companies live and breath customer service and it comes from corporate. My impression is that headquarters has never really done this. Yeah, they've had programs over the years, but it's never struck me as holistic or consistent. For example, like 2 decades ago they had the "money back guarantee". Basically you complain, you'd get a refund. Sounds like great customer service right? "Hey you'll love the ride!" But, some people definitely abused it. But I also go the feeling that it was sort of held over the heads of the poor employees, "Oh look you cost us a fare, do better!" That probably didn't help employee morale at all.

One thing that think is related to the problem, but not THE problem is "unions". Yes, I suspect some employees hide the behind the fact that they've got a union protecting them. But, airlines are heavily unionized and as some have noted, some have great customer service. I would often fly Southwest and while many don't like it because of its boarding, etc, I found on pretty much every flight, the customer service was consistently good. And considering I was usually flying at the end of the day when they were on their last legs, that says a lot. So I don't htink one can necessarily say, "oh, it's unions" and blame it all on them.

Ultimately, I think part of the solution would be to hire someone, perhaps with title of CHO - Chief Hospitality Officer, whose mandate is to develop a corporate culture from the top down of customer service. I think the biggest challenge to this would be consistent funding.
I do want to suggest individual improvements. I think it has to be a culture change starting at the top.

I completely agree with all of your points Greg, and again I am by no means blindly defending rude employees everywhere. You are 100% on culture change needing to begin with the top, and the idea of a Hospitality group is spot on. I think a good place to start would be for Amtrak to have plain-clothes ambassadors on regular trains across the system to check in with riders and to observe employee behavior and interaction with customers. Not necessarily to punish rude employees or sneakily catch them in the act, but more to see what goes on during a regular revenue service. If a train gets a report like the OP's, corporate should send a monitor to ride that train with that crew if possible to verify if it was an isolated incident or if it's an employee with a bad attitude. If it becomes the latter then corporate should use that data to find the root cause of the issue, not punish. Offer hospitality training and incentives, see where changes can be made to improve crew mental health and working conditions; use the carrot, not the stick. I'm also not endorsing "big brother" levels of observation, but obviously if a crew knows they're being reviewed then they're probably not going to behave naturally. I know from experience that at my dealership when New Holland reps show up we are usually informed ahead of time and we gear up like we're going on parade through Red Square lol. And obviously what I'm suggesting all takes time and money and other resources, and would be a HUGE culture shift, but I feel like it would be a worthy investment.

NaugyRR wrote: ↑Sat Oct 29, 2022 8:57 am Also, off topic, I really wish Portillo's would open some locations in the Northeast. Chicago beef and a cake shake sound delightful, haha.

WAAAY OT Mr. Naugy, but Portillos recently announced they would file for an IPO with the intent of taking their brand "national", so maybe the Northeast is "on their radar".

If I may, Amtrak at one time did have "charm school" you were sent there if you miss behaved with passengers. Did it work, I really do not know. The few guys I worked with that went were the same when they came back. Conductors have customer service training within their rules training every year. I have no idea what they are taught I just make them stop and go, so it comes down to what that person decides to do with that training.

Rules class is stressful enough having to pass written rules exams with an 88% or better and 100% on signals and definitions cause well they are signals and we all need to know them. Except in Albany we deal with 5 different systems 4 of which you will be tested on during that week. Did I mention there is always the possibility of losing your job that week due to test taking just for a little more stress.Its no longer the idiots guide to rules like it was when I first hired out, a one day class and you were done. Classes are now 4 days and cover a ton of material and its all documented.

During my time in uniform I was threatened spit on/at insulted told to do things that were anatomically impossible. That was close to 20 years ago. I hear what the conductors go through today, same arguments as back then except today people tend to embellish a little more at times and the pandemic has sent some to another level of crazy. Cell phones were not as popular back the either so video was not taken as much as it is today. People buy a ticket and they think it is their train and they can do whatever they want, all it does is guarantee carriage from point A to B. Granted I would cringe when I had to work with certain conductors when I was in uniform, you just knew there would be issues. We are taught to TRY and put outside influences away till our tour of duty is over but sometimes...

Now that it appears that Amtrak will have monitors in all of their newbuilt equipment starting with the Ventures (just as you find on Brightline and overseas), could a safety briefing (footwear, vestibules - walk through them don't linger, Dutch doors, and whatever else necessary). This would help minimize Conductors from having to "play Safety Patrol".

Finally back on air travel (let's accept such is the benchmark for any commercial transportation), I don't know if such are staged with actors rather than real flight crews, but United has video briefings that are "real Broadway" set to their theme music "Rhapsody in Blue". They're "slick" and maybe someone just might watch for the entertainment value.

Gilbert B Norman wrote: ↑Sat Oct 29, 2022 11:41 am Finally back on air travel (let's accept such is the benchmark for any commercial transportation), I don't know if such are staged with actors rather than real flight crews, but United has video briefings that are "real Broadway" set to their theme music "Rhapsody in Blue". They're "slick" and maybe someone just might watch for the entertainment value.

These are mostly professional actors in the safety videos; however given the cost, complexity, and weight of those seat back systems, and the ubiquity of iPhones/iPads/small laptops, some newer (or refitted) mainline aircraft for domestic services are loosing the ability to show those videos and flight crews are once again providing live safety demonstrations.

One of the problems with requiring a safety demonstration on a train would be that a requirement like that applies to every passenger, which would lead to a logistical challenge--how do you ensure that every passenger boarding in-route gets the demonstration without disturbing every other passenger (especially at a 1 AM stop) and can you require that before every coach and sleeper are equipped with whatever technology you use (do be aware, there are passengers who don't use the train/airplane provided in-seat entertainment systems, so you can't rely on a passenger-initiated system).

If comical safety briefings are that memorable, they probably work. The point is to teach people a few key facts, not to show them that crashes etc are dangerous; they know that already.

And a little safety and how-to-use-the-train video could be good.

Flight attendants work together in the same room, in an artificial atmosphere created by airlines (which are, at least nominally, in competition for flight attendants as well as for passengers), and at cruising altitude they have few duties other than customer service.

Meanwhile, train crew members work out of each other's view and there is no competition among passenger railroads for either employees or passengers. And it should also be noted that most crew members also (or primarily) have operational duties, ranging from lifting tickets to heavy labor out in the weather and under time constraints, which does not exactly excuse egregious customer service but prevents the railroad from hiring or rewarding employees mainly for their customer service skills.

I have seen many more cases of extra-special good service than of even moderately bad service, let alone actual rudeness or dereliction. One sleeper attendant on the Cardinal took care of me and my family all the way from Washington to Crawfordsville, IN, when we got on and I promptly went down with fever and chills. I've seen attendants helping parents whose kids get sick, helping people with luggage, watching out for a nice old man with dementia who kept wandering off, and of course being kind to excited kids and railfans. And some (not all) of the complaints I've seen on this forum over the years have seemed pretty whiny to me: "an attendant made me sit in a specific spot," "a waiter wasn't smiling enough," that kind of thing.

But there are also some really bad cases (like the person who reported being literally yelled at for boarding at the wrong door and trying to walk down into the right car).

I don't like to ask "how should Amtrak make its individual employees be more like happy servants to the passengers by supervision". I'd rather ask "how could Amtrak change its systems, policies, and practices to create situations for good customer service and eliminate situations for bad customer service. Most of the bad service I've ever seen or heard about sounds like the result of stressful situations the Amtrak management could eliminate, not the result of bad employees.

Amtrak management could start by looking for places and/or situations that generate a lot of customer complaints and/or often make employees feel frustrated by interactions with passengers. (Poll employees about this, too, not just passengers.) From this forum and from personal observation:

1. Fix the boarding situation at Chicago. Build uniform, understadable rules and procedures to give passengers as much as possible of what they need and want. (In another thread, I described a conductor calling the police on a family trying to help an elderly relative onto the City of New Orleans AFTER AN AMTRAK EMPLOYEE AT THE DOOR TO THE PLATFORM TOLD THEM THEY COULD. That it was a White conductor and a Black family didn't make it any better, but the problem seemed to be with communication between employees and maybe confusing or just wrong rules for pax, not mostly or at least initially a racist thing. Most problems are much smaller, but there are plenty of complaints about boarding there.)
a. Signs at the platform doors telling pax which car is for passengers headed to which stations.
b. Signs on the sides of the cars (little arm could be hung on the door hinge, then removed, I bet) telling pax which stations are for that car. Why? So the conductors and attendants don't have to shout that out over and over again. A lot of times they are just trying to be heard but it can set a tone of them yelling AT the passengers.

2. Reserved seats on all-reserved trains all over the system.

3. Uniform rule to treat pax who board at the wrong door as innocent people making an easy mistake rather than miscreants; let them walk through to the next car or explain nicely that they need to get off and go around if it's crowded in aisles along the way.

4. Pay sleeping car attendants--or other staff--for a little extra time after the train gets in to get the cars ready for the next trip, so that they can let people sleep a little longer and so that none of them have an incentive to refuse to make down the beds for passengers boarding in the small hours (which happened to me on the northbouth CONO at Effingham at around 4 am). Or if that's a problem, then have the reservation system inform anyone who's getting on fewer than x hours from the final terminal or after x:00 AM they they aren't entitled to sheets but can pull out the seats and sleep if they want -- and charge them less. (Can you tell how pissed I was that the attendant said we couldn't have beds? And either lied to us or was very very wrong, claiming that the diner would close at something like 6:30 when it was really open until about 8:30 as it always is on that run.)

5. Same hours for food service on all trains, or at least on all runs of any given route. Post them. And don't have lunch break be at a time when lots of people want to eat lunch.

Gilbert B Norman wrote: ↑Sat Oct 29, 2022 9:03 am

NaugyRR wrote: ↑Sat Oct 29, 2022 8:57 am Also, off topic, I really wish Portillo's would open some locations in the Northeast. Chicago beef and a cake shake sound delightful, haha.

WAAAY OT Mr. Naugy, but Portillos recently announced they would file for an IPO with the intent of taking their brand "national", so maybe the Northeast is "on their radar".

Portillo's has had locations across the country for at 15 years. I've been to them in Anaheim and Phoenix... and I know they're in Iowa, Indiana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Florida. Texas is next.

As far as the "quality" on Amtrak. It's government funded transportation with 100% union labor and no expectations of profitability, return business, or concepts like a net-promoter score. There are no government mandated releases of customer satisfaction metrics like airlines are forced to provide on refunds, complaints, delays, or lost bags....

With constraints like that, what could possibly go wrong?...

RandallW wrote: ↑Sat Oct 29, 2022 2:17 pm

Gilbert B Norman wrote: ↑Sat Oct 29, 2022 11:41 am Finally back on air travel (let's accept such is the benchmark for any commercial transportation), I don't know if such are staged with actors rather than real flight crews,

These are mostly professional actors in the safety videos; however given the cost, complexity, and weight of those seat back systems, and the ubiquity of iPhones/iPads/small laptops, some newer (or refitted) mainline aircraft for domestic services are loosing the ability to show those videos and flight crews are once again providing live safety demonstrations. .

I would not expect anything other on the Canadair RJ "puddle jumper" I will fly to White Plains (HPN) in two weeks.

But Amtrak only will have overhead monitors such as Brightline, the Venture cars, Aviela's, the newbuilds on order, and as they have overseas.

Whoever is in charge of employee training at Brightline should do some consulting for Amtrak. Brightline employees were extremely helpful and friendly. And when my train left the station, the station staff lined up along the platform and waved.

Amtrak employees often just don’t seem like nice people, and don’t seem to care for customers. Yes, the general public is a pain, but airline employees seem happier and more helpful (that doesn’t mean that they’re all happy and helpful; they are simply happier and more helpful than Amtrak employees).

At a minimum, if employees would smile, say something like “Welcome aboard” when you board, and say something like “Thank you for traveling with us and we hope to see you again” when you get off, that would help. No smiles and no basic niceties just sets a rough tone.

RandallW wrote: ↑Sat Oct 29, 2022 2:17 pm These are mostly professional actors in the safety videos

What's your source on that?... Some of the commercials and safety videos included people I'd worked with at O'Hare and DFW. The unions tend to get particular about who represents them...

There might be a few airlines using professionals, but at the three airlines I've worked for, employees always were used in videos and TV commercials to represent employees. They even use family members of employees to fill up the passenger seats. Same thing goes for photos on the briefing cards.

I simply recall safety videos that prominently feature professional actors or comedians in the videos including placing upcoming blockbuster movies' characters into the safety announcement, or the actor being the person speaking in the video.