An article yesterday on Walesonline caught my attention. It stated that 12 per cent of young people and 18 per cent of adults in a Welsh public transport users’ committee survey felt that the way to improve bus use was for staff to change attitudes. They meant drivers. And surly ones at that.
Most of us most of the time invest large sums in staff training. It’s a budget that’s escalated dramatically over the last 25 years, especially over the last 15. Indeed, some of it’s now compulsory, DCPC wise. Yet, are we failing to make the right impression on the general public we serve?
I don’t think we are. I feel that training is one of our major successes. One problem is and always has been that a driver has a limited window in which to make a good impression. The job’s too intense to be other than perfunctory. It’s necessary for the job to be transactional and a short, sharp one at that. In the passengers’ eyes, this can translate into surliness, aloofness, unfriendliness, even antagonism.
If there was just that little bit more time to strike up a relationship then it might pay dividends. But there isn’t, accept on rural services where the pace is slower. Indeed, I bet if you ask passengers on a rural route for their impressions, they’d be more than content with their drivers and their attitudes, the very same drivers who next shift are hammered on an urban corridor and through necessity cannot spend any more time talking to the passenger than is absolutely necessary.
We know, for instance, that there are differences between more rural and more urban garages, with rural or small town depots doing better on relationships with the public. This doesn’t make drivers in larger garages hostile.
Though the report mentions problem passengers, it would seem that the survey didn’t ask passengers what they thought of themselves. For nine times out of 10, the reason the driver appears “surly” is because of an incident regarding a problem passenger (often a young passenger, it has to be said). It would be nice to think that the driver doesn’t over-react but sometimes, just sometimes, at the end of a hard shift of heavy traffic (passengers) and heavy traffic (congestion) some little thing becomes all too much for a driver. We shouldn’t accept this but we can understand it.
i Walesonline article by Buses writer Rhodri Clarke
Tuesday, 28 June 2011
Attitude
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30 comments:
The introduction of Oyster has removed almost all interaction between passenger and driver on London bus services. Many drivers now seem to pointedly avoid eye contact by staring straight ahead or at the steering wheel.
I think that many passengers, myself included, would appreciate a smile or at least a nod in acknowledgement that we have boarded the bus and correctly accounted for our journey.
Unfortunatly the poor attitude of drivers towards their customers also prevails throughout the industry.It something deeply routed in the culture of the bus industry which I think is unlikely to change. It seems as well to be largely confined to the tranport industry and the call centre industry
I have no problem at all with young passengers - it's the old dears on their passes who take a week to board and then travel one stop who really get me.
They make the schedules impossible to achieve and inconvenience the fare paying passengers I really want to serve well.
Its a two way thing.respect to be respected is an cliche that still stands up to scrutiny.Years ago of course the driver was remote in his cab and never noticed by the passengers.they were being coddled by the conductor..Happy days.
Anonymous said...
".. something deeply routed in the culture .."
Very droll, Mr Glum. Or do you simply not understand the difference between 'routed' and 'rooted'?
25 years ago as a driver I transferred from a rural garage to a New Town with farebox operation.
With fareboxes all that was necessary was to check that the money inserted was correct, and press the button to let it into the vault. There were no passes as such - everyone paid.
I used to say "Morning" or "Afternoon" in a general manner to every 4th or 5th passenger; rarely did I get a response. I did on one occasion, though!
The passenger returned to the cab and said "What did you say?" I replied "I said 'Morning'". He said "now listen Sonny, you're new here. In this town you don't speak to us and we don't speak to you. Got it?
When I returned to the canteen I mentioned this to the canteen lawyers and they agreed with the passenger! I never quite got the hang of not greeting passengers, but I did pick my moments in the future!
Luckily I was promoted out of the garage within 6 months, but it wasn't a pleasant 6 months!
The moral - the driver can never win!
My experience in East London is completely different from that of the first person to comment here. I use buses round here frequently and always make a point of greeting the driver when I board - the greeting is nearly always acknowledged. I always call out thanks when they let me off and that is usually acknowledged too. My sympathy tends towards the drivers rather than the passengers, whose behaviour leaves plenty to be desired in many ways.
The moral - the driver can never win!
But please never ever stop trying ladies and gentlemen.
Genuine courtesy costs nothing and we should make every effort to encourage it.
As much for our own sake and our self respect as for the passengers or our employers.
God forbid that it should drop to the insincerities of 'have a nice day' so prevalent in the western colonies.
So please bear in mind 'do unto others' etc.
Or you may simply prefer
nil carborundum illegitimi ....
Sermon over, thank you for listening!
Perhaps drivers should have little button to press every so often which plays a recorded message saying to the whole bus "Good morning /afternoon/evening everyone. Welcome aboard and thank you for travelling with us today.
Perhaps Boris could do the vocals for TfL routes ?
It very much depends where you are, I think.
Some of the routes in this rural shire are very much part of the community, and I don't just mean the deep rural ones, even on some of the "mainline" services drivers know everyone. Passengers are greeted as they board, spoken to as the leave - and not just a "thank you", but something more personal, like "have you seen Mrs X, she wasn't on this morning you know.." One driver I know even gets a wave from the people in the hair-dressers as he passes!
And it's not just the independant operators who have staff like this, Stagecoach have a couple of routes where they choose to use small teams of drivers, and they too give (and recieve) the personal touch.
Perhaps thats the key, in a small team of drivers a poor one will soon be found out. In a large depot where a driver might not drive the same journey for several months it's easy to "hide". Of course huge urban routes with large PVRs don't lend themselves to this style of operation. And the poor scheduler will always have to balance small teams with overall efficiency
A high profile service I use has regular drivers who almost all have cheery interaction with the passengers.
When shiny new buses arrived, these met the group standard with fixed security screens, compared with the open cab layout of the five year old buses being replaced (see, it's profitable too!).
Result - instant isolation of the driver as a remote figure, partly obscured by scratches on the plastic screen and his/her inability to see easily passes and tickets being presented by passengers.
Not everything is progress.
"Result - instant isolation of the driver as a remote figure, partly obscured by scratches on the plastic screen and his/her inability to see easily passes and tickets being presented by passengers.
Not everything is progress."
When these arrived for Milton Keynes, the drivers tended to leave them open. I think this is still the case.
But yes, it does seem adversarial when used in places where it's not needed.
There's definitely a link between friendliness/interaction and regular drivers on a route. One of my local routes has regular drivers (the depot only operates something like 5 services) and the other one is not quite so much but still fairly regular (still small depot, well outstation, but operates more than the other and more drivers). The former know the regulars... not necessarily by name, but will recognise their faces, remember where they get on and off mostly, what ticket they usually get etc. The latter for the most part has a bit less interaction but I'm pretty sure they remember many of the passengers' faces at least and roughly where they get on/off.
Anyone know why *in general* Stagecoach drivers seem to be far more courteous than First, Arriva or NatExp etc etc ?
Of course it goes without saying that Brighton & Hove probably top the list [again].
What is it that Stagecoach, or B & H, actually do that's so different?
I imagine it's more enjoyable working for a better company - and as a passenger it's certainly my view that Stagecoach is the best of the big groups.
I was a conductor for 7 years and a driver for 25 years - rural, inter-urban and urban routes, two rural garages and one town garage. We had a few 'grumpy' drivers years ago and the conversion from crew to OMO did not always help, as some drivers never wanted to be face-to-face working with passengers.
Most drivers I knew preferred the rural and inter-urban routes though drivers 'bought up' on urban routes never wanted to go out of town.
As a generalization (not to tar all drivers with the same brush, but...) we lost so many relaibel friendly drivers due to privatization, deregulation and the impersonal attitude of the "big groups' with some opting to work for less money, and less stress, at an independent.
Passengers changed over the years too, perhaps because where I worked saw a large movement out of London. But I have to say that many of the last staff that I saw (many sent our way from The Job Centre) should never have been allowed near passengers.
Is there scope to have more than one rota - particularly at larger garages. Drivers have to then prove themselves to get on the "better rota" and can be moved back if they don't keep to the standard?
robert said...
"Is there scope to have more than one rota - particularly at larger garages."
Naturally - for example, using separate rotas for specific routes or groups of routes. After all, if the buses themselves can be 'route-branded', why not the drivers as well? I suspect this may already happen in some cases, and it certainly did in the past.
A really interesting and thought provoking mystery traveller article in Passenger Transport this month written by Alec Warner, formerly of Greyhound. He travelled the Arriva network in Shrewsbury and shared his experiences of driver customer care - much good, some poor.
As a passenger I feel that it is only courtesy to greet the driver, to say please and thank you. It all depends how you look at life. Equally some drivers are just grumpy by nature, or have had a bad day.
"Drivers have to then prove themselves to get on the "better rota" and can be moved back if they don't keep to the standard?"
Moved back to what, the "worse rota" - for bad drivers with bad attitude. How morale boosting! What routes are run by drivers on the worse rota then, the less profitable routes, so that the passengers on those are always subjected to the grumpy drivers, while the profitable routes have freindly drivers?
Or do the "worse rota" drivers work the more profitable routes, so the passengers they put off by being grumpy doesn't affect profitability too much...?!
"Anyone know why *in general* Stagecoach drivers seem to be far more courteous than First, Arriva or NatExp etc etc ?
Of course it goes without saying that Brighton & Hove probably top the list [again].
What is it that Stagecoach, or B & H, actually do that's so different?"
The B&H fan club is back in the room, B&H are good but not great in my experience, as a regular traveller in Brighton on business several years ago I experienced some of the worst examples of bus driving in my life - the kind that couldn't even acknowledge you with a grunt whilst others thought bus lanes were a rally track undertaking other traffic at terrific speeds but any poor sod in the way would stand zero chance. Of course not every driver was like that but there was a fair share of bad uns so in my experience good but not great and nowhere near perfect.
Some years later I became a staff manager for a bus company interviewing my fair share of ex-bus drivers from other companies including Stagecoach, First, Arriva and at least one ex-employee of B&H. Excluding the guy who came from B&H who turned out to be an unreliable nightmare to be honest there was the good, bad and ugly in equal measure from all the operators. There was also a stagecoach depot down the road who were always happy to consider the dregs I had kicked out the day previously, sometimes they took them on, sometimes they didn't but those they did take proved to be as much of a nightmare to them as they had been to me.
Anonymous said...
'Moved back to what, the "worse rota" - for bad drivers with bad attitude. How morale boosting!'
The wording of the original suggestion was, perhaps, a little unfortunate. If the various rotas cover different routes then there should not be a 'better' or 'worse' rota, but they will naturally have different characteristics. Thus different rotas will appeal to different drivers.
Alternatively, different rotas might be created for different types of work - for example, one depot in my experience had a separate rota for a group of school workings that included journeys to baths and playing fields in the middle of the day. Not everyone's cup of tea, but it suited some drivers.
There might also be a 'promotional' hierarchy through the various rotas - which might be what the original commenter intended!
"There might also be a 'promotional' hierarchy through the various rotas - which might be what the original commenter intended!"
Yes, exactly. So the best drivers work their way up through the "promotional hierarchy". So one rota for certain routes get the best drivers...?
Anonymous said...
"So one rota for certain routes get the best drivers...?"
Not necessarily - it depends (partly) on which basis the rota is sub-divided. No system will be perfect, of course there will be anomalies, but the complaint is that one single rota doesn't always work well either, particularly at larger depots.
"Of course it goes without saying that Brighton & Hove probably top the list [again]."
Sorry to drag this up from a comment made two days ago, but you have got to be joking.
Brighton & Hove's drivers have become more and more miserable every time I go to visit Brighton. They take pride in leaving passengers behind, shrug their shoulders and say "I haven't got the foggiest idea" (literally) in a snarky and sarcastic tone when asked a perfectly reasonable question.
A complaint I've made about their drivers has gone completely unanswered. Roger French should be ashamed of his staff as they're letting his company down badly.
"They take pride in leaving passengers behind, shrug their shoulders and say "I haven't got the foggiest idea" (literally) in a snarky and sarcastic tone when asked a perfectly reasonable question."
This highlights another problem.
It is an eminently reasonable question to ask a bus driver at what time a bus on another route departs, or where from, particularly where it's the same company. But normally the driver does not have the information to answer that, and some get frustrated when repeatedly asked.
So - bus companies - why not provide it? It's particularly easy to do so in areas like Milton Keynes where a full timetable book is issued.
Less easy is "Where's number X, I've been waiting ages". But again, these days technology exists to update people with what's going on, e.g. severe traffic delays or a missing bus.
Neil said...
"It's particularly easy to do so in areas like Milton Keynes where a full timetable book is issued."
Therein lies the problem - in that a full timetable book often does not exist. In earlier times, an operator could simply gave every member of staff a timetable book. I still believe that would be quicker than using an electronic 'timetable enquiry', or calling a control centre by radio!
"Where's number X, I've been waiting ages"
In many stops in B&H, that information can be obtained by stepping back of the bus and consulting the information system at the stop.
Lack of proper timetable information is the norm. Even the timtables at bus stops when they are there are so vage as to be almmost usless. They give the time the buses arrive many dont even show the route against the times and when they arrive at the destination. No use at all if you need to change buses or know when the bus will arrive at a particular place
THe other problem is the timetables are usualy out of date and incomplete as well. It's similar with real time systems. I have yet to find a sysytem that works properly so they cannot be relied upon
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