Being called a "customer" instead of a pasenger makes me want to scream with rage every time I hear it, especially when I imagine the consultants and marketing gonks employed, and their fees, to push through this utterly pointless bit of linguistic chicanery. You are public transport infrastructure, not a fucking shop.
You pay to go on the tube. You can choose not to. That makes you a customer of the tube.
Far better surely that such a system is designed in mind that someone might choose not to use it than that they'll get whatever they're given. I'm not sure why you would be outraged by this.
Because it's public infrastructure. TFL is a government body. We also pay to to use the road in the form of taxes, it would not be nice for the government to call us a 'customer'.
If thats not a good enough example, there are plenty of government departments that require payment for their services and I think the same would apply. Like renewing a passport, I would hate to be called a customer.
The roads are free at the point of use, the tube isn't. There's also the idea that words make a difference to how the staff will "see" the passengers and thus how they will perform their jobs. Are they a nuisance to be herded around or are they the people to whom you owe your job security? It's the same in IT ,it sometimes says things about a person's attitude depending on whether they say "user" or "customer".
Good points; it just seems like things were better back when it was called "passenger". Unless I'm seeing through rose-tinted glasses organizations used to have a self-concept of providing a public service, of reliability, fairness, consistency.
It might come down to focus - as a Customer, it sounds like I am a cash cow, as a Passenger, the focus is on getting me from A-B.
The railways in the UK don't work well from the point of view of getting people from A-B, from the point of few of extracting a lot of money from Customers they work extremely well.
The tube is already very busy without people using it for frivolous journeys. At least it still costs people money (car) or physical effort (cycling) to use the roads.
There are cities with free transit systems however.
"The roads are free at the point of use, the tube isn't."
No they're not. They are partly funded by general taxation, just like the NHS. However, if you want to drive your car on the road, you can't just drive it. You have to first pay a specific 'vehicle tax' which is per vehicle, per year: https://www.gov.uk/tax-disc
I'll just copy this: Their business is not selling transportation but moving the population of London around to where they need to be. The government is the customer and the people are passengers.
The flip side of being a customer is the responsibility of improving your experience always resides with you. If the service doesn't fit you should shop elsewhere. That reasoning falls short for obvious reasons with most infrastructure services.
I had to call the Disney Store yesterday and they referred to me a "Guest" and their customer service staff as ... "Cast Members". That's branding going to the extreme.
The problem with the term customer in the article is that it felt like they would count the same customer multiple times (when they mean passenger). If I ride daily, I'm not 5 customers, I'm one repeat customer. But I'm a passenger 5 times.
All in all though, I think this will be a welcome change as every time I travel to London and go on the tube at rush hour, I'm thankful that I work in a nice quiet cemetery.
It's a long term and well-thought-out attempt by marketers to change the public's expectations of their relationship with public transport. This started twenty years ago with privatisation of the railways: probably the new private train operators felt a change in terminology was required to make people accept they were no longer dealing with a state-owned network and that the balance of power had shifted towards private enterprise.
Basically an attempt at using linguistics to reprogram a large population. But it hasn't worked: people are very conscious of new words being forced upon them and the result is that it makes the industry look sleazy.
You prefer being called a "usager" (a "user" in the most vulgar sense of the word) just like in France? Being called a customer sounds so much better and respectable.
Having used some of the best and worst public transport systems in India, I wish they would consider their passengers customers. Most of the times, people who run public transport systems where their jobs are guaranteed treat you like an annoyance to be somehow tolerated, and often yelled at. I guess there is a golden median between that and something like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLfghLQE3F4).
Their business is not selling transportation but moving the population of London around to where they need to be. The government is the customer and the people are passengers.
Airlines is not selling transportation but moving the population where it needs to be in the world. You are just arguing semantics, they both do the very same thing.
Consider an empty plane where all the seats are paid for by passengers that all coincidentally were late to the airport. That's not a problem for the airline, because the tickets got sold and it was the passengers fault. However, this is a failure for the tube, for which payment is secondary.
For an airline, transportation is an unfortunate side-effect of getting paid. For the tube, managing tickets is an unfortunate side effect of transporting people.
I'm not sure I understand your example very well or what you are trying to say.
> Consider an empty plane where all the seats are paid for by passengers that all coincidentally were late to the airport. That's not a problem for the airline, because the tickets got sold and it was the passengers fault. However, this is a failure for the tube, for which payment is secondary
In both cases, the airline and the tube have fixed costs related to having planes flying or trains running. For both of them payments are necessary to offset the fixed costs and generate profits to further invest in better transports.
They key difference is that for one the volume of passengers is much higher than the other, therefore "full capacity" is defined in very different terms in the Tube vs a plane. People don't stand in a plane like they do in the Tube.
