(The following article by Annie Gowen was posted on the Washington Post website on January 27.)
WASHINGTON — As Metro carries out a major campaign to improve customer service for its 600,000 daily riders, the new chairman of the transit agency’s board says Metro would do well to look to a neighbor to the south for inspiration on how to improve.
Metro board Chairman T. Dana Kauffman, a Fairfax County supervisor (D-Lee), said he hopes to institute several customer service measures in the next few months that are inspired in part by the customer care provided by Virginia Railway Express. He said that VRE’s attention to its riders has helped make it one of the fastest-growing commuter railways in the country.
“I think VRE has done an excellent job in truly putting the customer first,” said Kauffman, who is on the commuter railroad’s board of directors. “This was in large part because of the terrible challenges we faced in ridership not that many years ago. For all the concern about crowded cars now, [in the beginning] trains were running virtually empty. . . . I think now it’s [traffic] congestion that drives people to VRE and customer service that keeps them there.”
VRE’s customer service is praised by riders — even as they kvetch about crowded cars and rising ticket prices. The railroad sends out streams of solicitous e-mails detailing even minor delays and has organized a ridership advisory group.
Ridership has swelled more than 17 percent annually in the past three years, and officials say they hope to expand the railway south from its terminus at Fredericksburg into Spotsylvania County and west from Manassas into Fauquier County. They even plan to test a train to Charlottesville.
“I think they do a good job. It seems like they’re very caring with people,” said Lou Hoffman, 53, a Stafford resident who rides VRE from Quantico to Union Station daily to his job as a federal court administrator. One headache that remains is that trains — some of which run on a CSX line — are often delayed by freight trains, and an automated ticket system is sometimes more trouble than it’s worth, Hoffman said.
VRE works hard to inform its ridership — about 8,000 to 9,000 riders making 15,000 trips a day — about delays or breakdowns in a stream of chatty e-mails, said Wendy Lemieux, the manager of customer service for the Alexandria-based railway, which has been in operation since 1992.
It updates its Web site with track conditions as early as 4:30 on inclement mornings. Its managers periodically show up at stations to serve customers coffee and doughnuts on “Meet the Management” days. They offer riders vouchers for free trips if there is a delay of more than a half-hour.
Kauffman said he wanted to use some of VRE’s customer service outreach with Metro, including helping to establish a ridership advisory board similar to the group of 250 riders that advises VRE.
Public distaste for Metro has increased after two fare increases were followed by several incidents in which employees were accused of mistreating customers. A transit police officer arrested a woman for eating a candy bar, a station manager threatened a young couple with a broom and a train operator abandoned her train during rush hour.
Leona Agouridis, assistant general manager for communications at Metro, said the agency has taken several steps to improve its image, such as bimonthly online chats for riders with Metro officials, a town hall-style meeting with riders and guidelines for employees on how to speak more politely with riders on the telephone.
“Our customers were telling us we needed to take a step back and improve things,” Agouridis said. “We started out as a construction organization. What’s happened over the years is that our mission has changed; perhaps what it should have been all along is to serve people. That’s a culture change that doesn’t happen over night, but it’s occurring.”
Metro officials concede that much needs to be done to improve customer service. They also point out that Metro is much larger than VRE. The demographics are different, too: VRE caters to the comfortable, middle-aged suburban commuter, mostly male, on trips to and from Washington. Metro’s customers are much more diverse.
“Heavy rail and commuter rail are two different things, but they both carry people, and people want to know that they are heard and have their complaints heard and treated as legitimate,” Kauffman said.