Station staff are being re-trained in one-to-one sessions regarding the mystery shopper survey.
They are being told to 'smile' more and end each conversation with a customer with a 'parting comment'. Apparently, these are the two main areas where staff are failing to provide an excellent customer service, and scoring below the required standard.
This is at a time when staff morale is at an all-time low. Ticket offices are closing, staff are being displaced, station refurbishment and escalator works are ongoing, resulting in extremely congested and overcrowded stations.
CSAs are acting more as stewards at a football match implementing crowd control and trying to deal with situations with dangerously low staffing levels, and yet instead of praising staff for providing customer service under such pressure, they are criticising the staff! The targets for 'attention to customer' have increased and yet the targets for 'knowledge' and 'politeness' have gone down.
Tubeworker thinks passengers would become extremely irate with staff if they were to stand on a gateline constantly smiling during a time when train fares have increased, yet the service is still constantly disrupted to do signal failures and engineering work over-runs, etc. Maybe if they were to put as much emphasis on running a half decent train service instead of putting staff down we wouldn't need to be re-trained in smiling more.
Staff overall do a fantastic job despite receiving little recognition. Being told to smile more is a disguise for the fact that goal posts have been moved to ensure staff are unable to meet their targets and therefore receive no bonus.
