The Toronto Transit Commission is turning to a veteran Torontonian hotelier to give the beleaguered commission a customer-service makeover.
The TTC meets today to discuss a report on how to improve the way Canada's largest public transit system interacts with its millions of riders. It's recommending Steve O'Brien, general manager of the 575-suite One King West Hotel & Residence, to head up a nascent advisory panel the commission hopes will help it address its customer-service challenges.
Mr. O'Brien is a hospitality-service veteran in Toronto, having worked with Marriott Hotels & Resorts, Hilton International, Delta Hotels & Resorts and Ramada Canada. According to a TTC release, he was "an integral part of the opening team" for four Toronto hotels and has served on multiple brand and customer service councils.
He got accolades from both the TTC and his staff last fall when he rolled out subsidized transit passes for employees at One King West.
"We believe this is good for our employees, good for tourism and good for the city," Mr. O'Brien said in a November statement. "We're challenging other businesses to get on board because a strong transit system means less traffic and less pollution, and that's good for business."
The customer-service advisory panel is one of several initiatives proposed in a report going before the commission on Wednesday. Others include having "secret shoppers" check up on TTC employees, and rolling out new training protocols, especially for fare booth operators.
A photo of a TTC employee asleep in his chair in a fare booth at McCowan station in early January set of a firestorm of commuter discontent as riders did their utmost to capture cell-phone footage of transit staff asleep on the job. The frenzy prompted the head of the TTC union to call on the public and members of the media to stop bullying his members.
The report going before the commission today states the TTC "recognizes and acknowledges that many of its customers have been disappointed and discouraged in recent months."
Although the report states that this applies to only a "small percentage" of TTC employees, it goes on to add that "our assessment of the events in recent weeks is that these matters are not just isolated incidents, but an indication of a culture that has become too accepting of performance that does not always meet expectations."
Those problems date at least as far back as a 2008 workplace culture survey, the report states, noting that although absences have decreased, employee performance could use improvement.
But the report notes that no funding has been set aside in the TTC's precarious budget - which takes up 14 per cent of the city's 2010 operating budget - for these initiatives, so any necessary funding for the advisory panel, the proposed "secret shoppers" or new four-hour, six-month training program would have to be reallocated from elsewhere in the cash-strapped commission.