Amtrak onboard personnel variability

Agreed that it’s the person, not the company, that is the main thing in customer service.

There are some things that Amtrak as a company could do to help, at least. For one, have crew sit and hang out in a dorm car. Not taking up all of the tables in the cafe car. That seems pretty basic.

After a rough experience with a nasty crew member on the Crescent, I learned that (1) Amtrak does not care if customers complain about nasty crew members and (2) a prevailing view is that one reason why there is so much variation among crew member quality is that onboard service personnel don’t have a boss on board who can enforce compliance with Amtrak customer service requirements.

In short, if a nasty crew member wants to make up his own rules and scream at passengers, nobody on board will necessarily stop him, and Amtrak headquarters won’t care, either.

However, I recently learned that US airlines don’t have an onboard “head of flight attendants”, either, and there is nobody onboard a plane who will watch to ensure that flight attendants give good service. Yet I find airline flight attendants to have much less variation in crew quality than Amtrak onboard employees have.

So since neither airlines nor Amtrak have an onboard boss who can supervise crew members to ensure that they give good service, the reason why Amtrak has more variation in crew quality (i.e., more nasty onboard employees) must be that Amtrak either is less selective in hiring or does a poor job training employees about customer service.

I welcome others’ thoughts.

Nightjet wrote: ↑Sat Jan 21, 2023 3:47 pm .However, I recently learned that US airlines don’t have an onboard “head of flight attendants”

From Hilton Downtown Miami (after a good flight down here)--

I think that position is known as First Attendant, or Purser.

You are correct.

And a “first attendant” or “purser” does not exist on US domestic flights generally.

Yet flight attendants are generally pretty consistent in their level of customer service. Unlike Amtrak.

That consistent quality on airlines is because a percentage of those top customers in first have direct lines to concierges or executives. There are also managers and executives who fly often enough to observe when things go badly. And then there are ghost riders who do anonymous QC checks...

More importantly, the people doing those jobs usually enjoy what they do, and want to keep doing it. That makes a huge difference in how they deal with people.

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Nightjet wrote: ↑Sat Jan 21, 2023 3:47 pm
In short, if a nasty crew member wants to make up his own rules and scream at passengers, nobody on board will necessarily stop him, and Amtrak headquarters won’t care, either.


I welcome others’ thoughts.

This is unequivocally not true, you write a letter stating your complaints it will make its way to that employees supervisor. I myself have been on the "carpet" once or twice in my career for "bad boy" letters. We have a The Good The Bad The Ugly board in our crew base. Good letters are posted as are some not so bad. The Ugly is going to get you a face to face with a Trainmaster.

Back in the day long distance trains had chiefs who were in charge of all the OBS employees. Some thought they were also in charge of the Conductor and Engineer but I digress. Complaints about the coach, sleeping, cafe car attendants and the dining car staff would be handled by them. The position was eliminated back in the late 90s. If you had a good chief generally you had no problems with OBS.
Today if you have a issue with a crew member you need to talk to the Conductor. He is the ultimate chief of the train. Problem with him then the only recourse you have is to get their name, if they will give it to you, the train number with departure date and send it to Amtrak. It will find its way.

Although a letter to Amtrak HQ "after the fact" has some value, the need is to PREVENT the offensive conduct.

Although Customer Service is an essential element of "training", absent meaningful enforcement - by example and otherwise - Amtrak's service is doomed to remain inconsistent.

This is a management failure, for which the specific responsibility rests with the CEO, to "set the standards". Managers need to be visible: aboard trains, at stations, at places where crews sign on and off duty and, in other places where supporting services are clustered. They are responsible to listen to the employees they meet and to effectively address problems. Keep in mind Amtrak's on-board employees bear the customer-facing effects of cancelled or delayed trains and equipment failures of every kind.

As long as Amtrak's own reports blandly characterize equipment failures as "issues" - rather than the FAILURES they are, the opportunity to "Manage by Prevention" will continue to be lost.

Sadly, the roots of inconsistent service at Amtrak run deep and wide.

Through the years there have been many, many customer service programs rolled out to forward facing employees. Most of which I do not remember the catchy names assigned to them. I do however remember spending two days I New Haven Connecticut for a customer service class being taught by Ernst & Young perhaps? Did it help? I could not tell you. Was it a waste of time and effort? Perhaps. The folks teaching had no idea about Amtrak never mind the job positions. There have been others like the Right and Ready program rolled out by G. Warrington, if it wasn't right it wasn't ready it wasn't supposed to go. OK sure wink wink nudge nudge. Then we had silos. What silo do you fit in? I don't remember. These are just some of the past 24 years of employment.

During "if you don't pass these tests you will loose your job week with 88% or better on these and 100% on these." AKA rules class conductors go through a day of mandatory customer service training. If one was truly serious about the training I would think it should be done in a less stressful environment. When you are taking five to ten major rules tests in 2 days your not worried about customer service/ADA.

Managers do make spot checks at stations and ride trains. Amtrak once had spotters that rode to watch the conductors. I know NYS does for sure and they have no problem reporting any issue directly to Amtrak. To the point they are hated by some of the conductors, you have a job to do so do they.

As a final note my father ran a couple different businesses while he was alive one was retail the other commercial cleaning. I worked both with him from my early teens till I hired out. He always said in retail/customer service if you had one of everything in the world someone would still want something you don't have and leave pissed. That something could be as easy as a smile, a good afternoon, taking a couple extra seconds with that person to answer a question. Something that is learned not taught.

eolesen wrote: ↑Sat Jan 21, 2023 10:14 pm That consistent quality on airlines is because a percentage of those top customers in first have direct lines to concierges or executives. There are also managers and executives who fly often enough to observe when things go badly. And then there are ghost riders who do anonymous QC checks...

More importantly, the people doing those jobs usually enjoy what they do, and want to keep doing it. That makes a huge difference in how they deal with people.

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The other factor is that US airlines are owned by shareholders, individuals who have invested their funds in corporate stock, directly or indirectly through mutual or similar funds. Those shareholders vote for the board of directors of the airline by proxy or directly at the annual meeting of stockholders. Poor customer relations will adversely affect earnings to the detriment of the owners of the airline.

Ken W2KB wrote: ↑Sun Jan 22, 2023 6:08 pm Poor customer relations will adversely affect earnings to the detriment of the owners of the airline.

LIKE that really matters. It certainly does not matter to the Class 1 RRs.

Railjunkie wrote: ↑Sun Jan 22, 2023 12:06 pm Amtrak once had spotters that rode to watch the conductors. I know NYS does for sure and they have no problem reporting any issue directly to Amtrak.

MTA also does, on LIRR and MNCR.

Not to be rude OP, and I understand your frustration, but why do we need another thread on this topic?

You already have at least two recent posts that we all went around and around on saying the same stuff, and are doing the same thing here.

poor-amtrak-customer-service-how-to-add ... 74694.html

amtrak-crews-why-the-variations-in-quality-t174758.html

Mods, could it be possible to merge these threads, please?

Moderators, would you please close my account? I'm done.

thanks for stopping by

Nightjet wrote:Moderators, would you please close my account? I'm done.

That's not the moderators job.

Feel free to not to return if you can't handle objective feedback, but the point made was valid.

By raising the same issue repeatedly in new posts instead of continuing in the threads where its already discussed, you create work for the mods to have to clean things up and merge.

Showing some courtesy for the mods goes a long way. Creating work for them has the opposite effect....

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