Modern technology offers significant opportunities to improve station operations and the customer experience. At the same time this new technology is changing the nature of communications between staff and passengers.
This study found six key trends in terms of station staff organisation and management across the Community of Metros:
- There is significant opportunity for many CoMET and Nova metros to rapidly and relatively cheaply improve customer information and assistance using remote and mobile technology.
- Remote monitoring of safety-critical systems (i.e. watching an escalator on CCTV) is currently preferred to remotely controlling the system (i.e. turning an escalator on or off), even when that capability exists.
- Some metros are beginning to use mobile applications to support staff operations, such as allowing staff to monitor and control CCTV, make public address announcements, or look up asset information from electronic manuals.
- The application of mobile devices in station asset management currently focuses around inspections rather than more direct forms of asset control.
- Metros are not creating overarching policies for the deployment of mobile technology, but instead choosing to focus on the end objective of improving customer experience and business productivity with whatever technology facilitates the task.
- There is significant variation across the group in terms of hardware, software and practical use of devices.
We also identified five key trends in terms of station staff organisation and management across the Community of Metros:
- Supported by electronic ticketing and self-service technology, ticketing staff roles are evolving to focus on broader customer assistance and increased visibility around stations.
- There is increasing use of multi-functional staff across the Community of Metros, as well as an increase in their capabilities and responsibilities.
- Metros are deploying increasing numbers of roaming staff, across a range of station operations.
- Metros are dividing their network into a higher number of station control zones that each contain fewer stations, with benefits for local knowledge, staff camaraderie and teamwork.
- Metros increasingly have one staff member per group performing a single coordinating role, responsible for both customer services and assets across a small group of stations.