The Toronto Transit Commission must listen to its customers.
Monday's release of suggested customer service improvements to the TTC, courtesy of its Customer Service Advisory Panel, provides an opportunity for the commission to do just that. The report contains 78 suggested improvements. While some of the suggestions clearly will take more time and investment to become realized, there are others that require minimal amounts of both. As a show of good faith, we think a reasonable place to start is to implement those kinds of measures as quickly as possible. Beyond the hiring of a customer service officer, we see quick wins with several of the suggestions relating to communication: improving signage quality at collectors' booths, adding an in-depth FAQ section to the website, and establishing frequent town hall meetings should be done in fairly short order. What a wonderful message to send: showing that citizens can engage in a thoughtful, respectful manner and be successful in triggering change. It would be a crowning achievement for this initiative to not be just another report set to gather dust on a shelf someplace. These exercises are helpful in that they are not overly skewed to points of view that already have plenty of say in the commission's operation. As the report acknowledged, "the new focus on customer service is overdue." Admittedly, all that ails the TTC is not customer service related. The challenges the TTC faces are multi-faceted: It is a vast, complex network that has evolved awkwardly. It is also chronically underfunded. The marked lack of cohesion that was on appalling display during the St. Clair streetcar debacle had little to do with customer service per se and everything to do with poor communication, budgeting and overall project management. That said, there's an opportunity for a minimal investment to result in big-time payoff in fairly short order: giving credence to the motto The Better Way. Customer satisfaction doesn't take billions of dollars of investment. This particular exercise, which began back in March, raises an interesting question. Are there other aspects of services delivered by the city which would benefit from a rigorous independent review similar to the one just conducted? Successful implementation of a number of the measures for the TTC bodes well for this to be a template, a standard for other city services. Building a 'service-first' and transparent brand with riders will buy the TTC credibility as it weeds through some of its larger infrastructure challenges.