Were railways better before passengers were referred to as "customers"?

[43096]

The day I first heard passengers referred to as “customers” was a clear sign that the end times were upon us.

It's the opposite - it's a clear sign that at least someone in the railway industry has thought that passengers actually pay to receive a service. Too often the default is to treat passengers as a nuisance ("self loading cargo" is a term i have heard used) rather than the person who pays the staff's salary.

 

[Journeyman]

I have absolutely no idea why this issue makes some people so angry.

 

[Ianno87]

I have absolutely no idea why this issue makes some people so angry.

Must be an overlap on the Venn Diagram with those that get upset by "train station".

 

[xotGD]

Can we compromise on 'Riders'?

(I hope not!)

 

[Journeyman]

Must be an overlap on the Venn Diagram with those that get upset by "train station".

Well, actually, you don't want to get me started on that abomination.

 

[Ashley Hill]

Could it be a generational thing? Anyone who has grown up since the 90s will generally be used to hearing and being referred to as customers. Perhaps it's also that generation who consider themselves to be customers of the railway when they arrive at the railway station!
I myself still use the term passenger when at work.

 

[LowLevel]

It's simple for me - if I am treating the person concerned nicely, giving them, hopefully, a pleasant journey with a nice relaxed atmosphere then I consider them to be my customers as they've paid for that privilege. This is the default position for me.

If it is all going to hell in the middle of a nasty situation, or they're breaking the rules and causing difficulties like being naughty drunk fighty people then I consider them to be passengers, because instead of politely fulfilling their needs, their/other people's immediate safety and well being potentially depends on them responding to my direction.

I often find that treating people well as customers makes them far easier to manage, if need be, as passengers. The two need not be mutually exclusive.

 

[The exile]

Caledonian Sleeper has.



And that's not just DB trying to be friendly, it's pretty common. Though you also get "Reisende", which is literally "travellers" but more of a translation of "passengers".

The thing that grates for me about DB isn't that, it's them wittering on in English. Sie sind in Deutschland, Deutsch bitte!

Interestingly (or maybe not!), I think the "Fahrgäste" tends to be "original DB" (ie Western) terminology, "Reisende" far more prevalent in old DR territory.

To return to the UK, the one I find much more irritating is "train" / "service". To quote a couple of examples from this morning. "This is your guard speaking. Welcome on board the 07.37 service to Bristol Temple Meads...." OK, I can live with that, but "...if anyone requires assistance I can be found at the rear of the service" - honestly! A "service" is the overall provision - be it hourly, daily, brilliant or mediocre. The thing on flanged wheels that departs at a certain time, has a front and a rear, and eventually arrives ("terminates" if you must!) is a TRAIN!

Incidentally - if the guard concerned happens to be reading this, it is not intended as a criticism of your announcements, which were among the clearest and most informative I've heard for a long time; just of what I suspect is "company policy" corporate speak.

 

[Oscar]

Fahrgäste is the German standard....

SBB (Swiss railways) use "Kunden" - "customers" on the website most of the time (the company does sell some ancillary services other than just travel). "Reisende" - "passengers" tends to be used for announcements.

 

[181]

It seems to me that 'passenger' has 'going somewhere' built into the meaning of the word, whereas 'customer' doesn't directly. Of course if going somewhere is the service for which the customer has paid then they should be enabled to go where they want to go (and thinking of them as a customer may be a good way of ensuring that that happens and that the service in general is of a high quality), but the two words do have different shades of meaning.

I think perhaps I think of 'passenger' as the normal term when I'm going somewhere in a pleasant and unremarkable way (this may well be helped by staff thinking of me as a customer as in post #37 above, but the word won't be at the front of my mind), but might feel the need to remind the railway that I'm a customer if the service is lacking in some way.

 

[ABB125]

Schuldeutsch ist gut, umgangssprachlich deutsch ist für die Briten einfach zu schwierig!

Entschuldigen Sie bitte? Was ist das?

Schuldeutsch ist das, was mir in der schule beigebracht wurde (seltsamerweise), aber umgangssprache Deutsch ist ausschließlich für die Einheimischen.

Ich kann die Meisten von das vestehen, aber nicht ganz alle! Ich muss mich Entschuldigen, da mein Grammatik sheisslich scheusslich ist; ich habe keinen Deutsch seit mein GCSE-überprüfungen gespracht. Ich hoffe, das Sie mein Schreiben vehrstehen!

(With apologies to any native German-speakers!)

I should probably say something about the actual thread topic too! Personally, I don't mind customers or passenger.

 

[Dr_Paul]

What does annoy me is why bother to deviate from normal language just for the sake of it.

Yes: there was absolutely no reason whatsoever to change from 'passenger' to 'customer'. 'Passenger' is a perfectly adequate word. I'm all for changing words that are or have become unsuitable, but not when there is no reason to change them.

 

[43096]

Yes: there was absolutely no reason whatsoever to change from 'passenger' to 'customer'. 'Passenger' is a perfectly adequate word. I'm all for changing words that are or have become unsuitable, but not when there is no reason to change them.

But there is good reason to change it: it recognises that the person has bought a service and isn’t just being carried/an inconvenience.

 

[Inversnecky]

It's the opposite - it's a clear sign that at least someone in the railway industry has thought that passengers actually pay to receive a service. Too often the default is to treat passengers as a nuisance ("self loading cargo" is a term i have heard used) rather than the person who pays the staff's salary.

Where does it stop though?

As I mentioned previously students in England have to pay thousands in tuition fees. Should they now bt termed "customers" of universities, instead of students?

I think, as others have mentioned, it's perhaps not so much the term itself, as the ideological forces that underpinned the pushing of the term - that railways and everything else weren't so much about "service", but rather primarily about profit and loss and everything else was peripheral.

 

[43096]

Where does it stop though?

As I mentioned previously students in England have to pay thousands in tuition fees. Should they now bt termed "customers" of universities, instead of students?

I think, as others have mentioned, it's perhaps not so much the term itself, as the ideological forces that underpinned the pushing of the term - that railways and everything else weren't so much about "service", but rather primarily about profit and loss and everything else was peripheral.

If you don’t deliver the service to your customers, you won’t make a profit in the long term.

 

[PHILIPE]

Interestingly (or maybe not!), I think the "Fahrgäste" tends to be "original DB" (ie Western) terminology, "Reisende" far more prevalent in old DR territory.

To return to the UK, the one I find much more irritating is "train" / "service". To quote a couple of examples from this morning. "This is your guard speaking. Welcome on board the 07.37 service to Bristol Temple Meads...." OK, I can live with that, but "...if anyone requires assistance I can be found at the rear of the service" - honestly! A "service" is the overall provision - be it hourly, daily, brilliant or mediocre. The thing on flanged wheels that departs at a certain time, has a front and a rear, and eventually arrives ("terminates" if you must!) is a TRAIN!

Incidentally - if the guard concerned happens to be reading this, it is not intended as a criticism of your announcements, which were among the clearest and most informative I've heard for a long time; just of what I suspect is "company policy" corporate speak.

The TOCs seem to want to refer to a train as a service. A service is a paper (or electronic) Timetable entry but people actually travel on a train which operates the service. Caledonian Sleeper refer to their travellers as guests.

 

[DorkingMain]

Someone purchasing a ticket is a customer,once purchased they become a passenger. I think to the general public it makes not the slightest difference.
I had to attend a "customer" care course where we were informed that everyone is a customer of somebody. The operating side of the railway is a customer of the engineering side as they pay to have their trains maintained. Therefore as a "customer" the operating side expect their trains back from the depot on time. There were more examples which I tried to stay awake for.

These sort of platitudes are usually driven by higher ups who are more concerned with "customer service" and "customer experience" than operational reality.

One important distinction here is that the person who bought the ticket is not necessarily the one using it.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Too often the default is to treat passengers as a nuisance ("self loading cargo" is a term I have heard used) rather than the person who pays the staff's salary.

Always thought that was an air industry term, but guess that it might have had its origins on the railway (if not shipping).

If we are still talking of changes in terminology, when were "Season ticket holders" first referred to as such, rather than as "Contractors" (which today has a rather different meaning)?

 

[Busaholic]

Having spent a mercifully short period working in the gaming industry, at least their description of the people whose personal money losses sustain that industry as 'punters' is not being proposed. Mind you, the contempt of many in the gambling fraternity for their 'customers' appears to be matched by some employed in the railway industry. ''Look here, sunshine, you're only a punter'' is the phrase that would encapsulate that contempt.

 

[Y Ddraig Coch]

Question asked was where railways better, before passengers where referred to as customers. Answer is simple.....No! My younger days are full of great memories of travelling on some amazing trains, head out of the window, corridor trains , Class 101 's , intercity with big bird, old 47 and 37s , great days and im only 40, but ......trains were filthy, late, and Sunday service abysmal or non existent, so my humble opinion is now.

 

[AM9]

Ich kann die Meisten von das vestehen, aber nicht ganz alle! Ich muss mich Entschuldigen, da mein Grammatik sheisslich scheusslich ist; ich habe keinen Deutsch seit mein GCSE-überprüfungen gespracht. Ich hoffe, das Sie mein Schreiben vehrstehen!

(With apologies to any native German-speakers!)

I should probably say something about the actual thread topic too! Personally, I don't mind customers or passenger.

It's 23:45 and my brain is beginning to hurt. I did 3 years of 'O' Level German and then gave it up. Since the early '60s, I have only spoken bits of it in der Vaterland when on business (twice), and when on holiday in Austria, mainly phrases like 'zwei bier bitte', then 'ein anderes bier bitte'. Most Germans speak better english than a lot of UK born people.

Passenger or customer doesn't bother me as an adress, but the insincerity of 'customer' can often be irritating, even if the staff are just parroting company policy.

 

[High Dyke]

The day I first heard passengers referred to as “customers” was a clear sign that the end times were upon us.

“Customers must not cross the line”?!

Absolutely. I travel on a passenger train not a customer train.

 

[GlitterUnicorn]

For me it's just the opposite - a "customer" is someone who buys something in a shop, it's basically a financial transaction, whereas the term "passenger" conjures up the image of a (pampered?) guest, well looked after on a train.

Additionally, the term customer for me, in the context of railways, just reeks of enforced ideological free market dogmatism, imposing a bleak, 'balance sheet' above all else, soulless transactionism, on what was previously a wholly different relationship.

Should English students, now they have to pay thousands for their education, be retermed "customers" as opposed to "students"?

The difference between "Student" and "Customer" is that in the past students were regarded as members of the University, and as part of the academic community there was a sense of mutual responsibility between the student and the university. Rather than regarding students as a source of income I suppose the idea was more like joining a club. Once you were in, what you got from it depended on how you took advantage of your time at university.

Now that universities are accepting huge numbers of students and slashing the level of support they offer you could probably make a case that universities are abusing the "not a customer" status of students to play bait and switch and deny them what ought to be the basics. Normally this means inconveniences like fun little unscheduled breaks in teaching due to strikes - since Universities exploit their staff as well as students. But, our friend the Coronavirus took this fun little pastime to a new extreme by luring students into paying extortionate amounts for student accommodation, eliminating all in-person teaching - thus removing the need to actually be in the city - and then leaving paying students fenced in and under guard in their rooms.

The difference between a customer and a passenger is that a customer has a choice. While you can safely offer a terrible standard of service unapologetically to people who don't have a choice. If people can decide not to get a train and instead travel by car/bus/plane/whatever then a hypothetical TOC run like my University would go out of business quite fast. Rather than treating passengers as an obstacle that gets in the way of running our little 1:1 scale trainset, customers acknowledges that they are individuals who have a choice and have to be attracted to use the trains, and looked after. That the railway is actually being run for them, not in spite of them.

 

[AM9]

But there is good reason to change it: it recognises that the person has bought a service and isn’t just being carried/an inconvenience.

So with forty years of 'recognising that the person has bought a service', we now have an efficient caring railway that satisfies the market that feeds it. I think not; - whilst it doesn't really matter whether the users of railways are called customer or passenger, the change to customer was just a cynical token born out of some business psychology culture in the Thatcher push for monetising everything.

 

[LSWR Cavalier]

Be thankful nobody has decided to call passengers "guests" (yet).

In German they are Fahrgaeste, travelling guests. Is that anything to do with Gormenghast?

Must be an overlap on the Venn Diagram with those that get upset by "train station".

I us 'train station' a lot, after someone told me that most towns have bus stations, police stations etc. Not to mention the phrase, 'I must ask you to accompany me to the station' %(

 

[Ashley Hill]

If we're going down this road then why do I go to a garage to refuel my car when everybody else goes to a petrol station even if their car is diesel?

 

[LSWR Cavalier]

I correctly use 'fuel station'. I shop at a 'food store', not a 'supermarket', there is nothing super about it.

 

[Ashley Hill]

fuel station

Never heard that used before but you live and learn!

 

[xotGD]

Deviating from the topic slightly, it has been highlighted that customers pay for a service.

So worth remembering that when you are using an online service for free, you aren't the customer, you (and your data) are the product.

Oh, and 'filling station'.

 

[32475]

A passenger is a passenger whereas a customer is someone in a supermarket. Sadly supermarkets are now staffed by customer experience enhancement consultants.
A few years ago I phoned Caledonian Sleeper about a booking only to be put through to one of their ‘ambassadors’. Why can’t we just call a spade a spade and get on with it?!