Are we passengers or customers?

[Santosh Bhat <santosh@student.unsw.edu.au>]

Here's an interesting subject I'd like to raise. When travelling on a
bus or a train or a fery etc..
Do you regard yourself as a passenger or a customer?

The difference between the two as I'd say it are that a passenger is
someone who uses a transport system, whereas a customer is one who is
using a business product or service.

If I'm regarded as a passenger I'd be willing to accept that trains are
late, that buses may be cancelled, and overcrowding occurs at some
times, because these are things that do happen to transport services.
However If I'm treated as a customer then it means I expect a quality of
service for the money I'm paying. I would not be happy about a late
running service as this is poor customer service, and if you think about
it I should be entitled to a discount or a refund because of the poor
level of service. This is what would happen in any other business.

So I feel that organisations like Cityrail should take the approach that
they run a transport service for the people of Sydney and that people
should accept that things can and do go wrong. But if they start
treating  everyone as customers then they had better start behaving like
any other business.

To give an example: I was stuck for two hours on the M4 motorway as a
result of Thursdays storm and an accident on the motorway. I then STILL
had to pay a toll, this is poor service if you ask me, should I really
still have to pay?

Cheers
Santosh (whos like 99.9% a transport engineer now)

PS. If you're a driver/gaurd on a train then YES I know you're neither a
passenger or a customer. 


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