Rail employee with a big heart

To mark the start of the competition ‘Eisenbahner mit Herz’ (‘rail employee with a big heart’), in which the Pro-Rail Alliance will be collecting the best travellers’ stories until the end of the year, the heads of the rail companies Veolia, Keolis and Deutsche Bahn have spoken out in favour of encouraging rail employees’ to take the initiative on trains and at stations. “The railways are only as good as their staff,” said the managing director of the Pro-Rail Alliance on Thursday in Berlin. “This is why we decided to bring together the larger railway companies to jointly answer the question: “How good are we really?” Flege called on rail customers to write down and comment on their travel experiences with particularly humorous or exceptionally helpful rail personnel. “We are hoping that by the end we will have some moving positive examples to go with the better known negative stories and representative opinion polls. We are interested in what is happening on trains travelling from Dresden to Aachen, from Hamburg to Freiburg,” said Flege. The Pro-Rail Alliance announced that in March 2011, a jury representing the three railway unions and the three largest passenger associations will choose the nicest railway employee from among all the entries sent in by passengers.

Rüdiger Grube, head of the national railways Deutsche Bahn added: “I have the highest respect for the hard work of the personnel who look after the passengers on trains. They do a great job under often difficult circumstances. Our customers’ image of Deutsche Bahn is largely dependent on them. At the same time, the demands of this job have probably increased in recent years. The commitment shown by a lot of staff working in customer service goes way beyond what is normally taken for granted. I am very pleased that the Pro-Rail Alliance is honouring this today. Our customers’ positive experiences will help us to encourage our colleagues on the trains to show more individual responsibility and take the initiative.”

Keolis boss Hans Leister pointed out that train personnel are more often having to face attacks by aggressive passengers. “Foul-mouthed verbal attacks, being spat at, assault or even grievous bodily harm are unfortunately not very unusual” said the head of Keolis Germany. For many years the company ran its eurobahn trains in Westphalia, a quiet part of the country. However, since it has started running services throughout the Ruhr Valley, including at night at the weekends, “we have unfortunately often had to deal with the issue of aggressive passengers.”

Other than is sometimes suggested by the headlines, rail employees score higher than average in opinion polls on customer satisfaction, said Leister. “In complaints relating to problems such as cancelled trains or delays, train staff are also often explicitly praised.”

The managing director of the train operator Voelia Verkehr, Axel Sondermann, also confirmed the generally favourable verdict given to personnel by their customers. “The Veolia Verkehrs Group committed itself to a differentiated service strategy right from the start,” said Sondermann. With the help of role playing during interviews, Veolia tests potential employees to determine whether they have the interests of customers at heart. “It is not enough to just know the ticket prices. We want employees who can lip read our customers’ wishes,” said Sondermann on Thursday in Berlin.

The German railways carry 6.3 million passengers per day in regional transport and 300,000 inter-city passengers. The state rail company Deutsche Bahn has a market share of around 80 percent. The other 20 percent of passengers use trains operated by other rail companies. These include Arriva, Benex, Hessische Landesbahn, Keolis and Veolia. Deutsche Bahn employees around 12,000 service personnel on its trains. Another 3,000 staff look after train stations and passengers. Deutsche Bahn employs around 14,000 train drivers on its regional and inter-city networks. The private rail companies employ around 6,000 customer service staff and train drivers. According to information provided by the union Transnet, the number of people working for Deutsche Bahn’s competitors has almost doubled since 2000. The Deutsche Bahn workforce has also increased slightly. The trendsetter for this development is the German state of Lower Saxony, which wants to increase to number of regional transport trains with service personnel from 20 to 40 percent.

Additional information (in German)

All the facts on the Big-hearted Rail Employee competition 2012