Lumo - new Open Access operator on the East Coast Main Line

[ivorytoast28]

Because they aren't paid £30k per year (from the job advert a couple of months ago) just to scan QR codes. They'll be more like aircrew trying to keep people comfortable and help them with any questions or other needs.

If we call them aircrew, we could just call them traincrew on trains and be done with it. The actual job title doesn't even need to be known to the public anyway, so they could call it something different in job adverts should they wish

 

[bb21]

I agree Train Captain is a bit silly, but Customer Experience Ambassador places the emphasis more on looking after the customer rather than running the train service, so I don't see why people are getting their knickers in a twist over it. It is about projecting an image away from the dated stereotype the industry is often associated with.

They are hardly going to lose sleep about upsetting some people on a railway forum. I hardly think anyone will refuse to travel with them because they used job titles which are deemed "silly", even people on this forum. I imagine plenty of forum members will bite their arms off at the opportunity to travel for a lower fare and/or bagging some rare tracks.

I am willing to give them a chance and reserve my judgement. There are certainly things which are definitely refreshing and they may well carve out their own (perhaps not so small) niche in time.

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

For those of you calling this service pretentious, have you seen some of LNER and GWRs branding? From their adverts and posters - and name - you’d think they were trying to recreate the golden age of steam travel, only with their 2017 built bullet trains that don’t exactly fit with the retro image.

I’m glad this 21st century train company actually looks like a 21st century company for once.

 

[Mintona]

It’s making me want to book a trip to Edinburgh, just to try it out.

 

[ScotTrains]

You can’t call them “crew”, they’re “ambassadors” and some other woke term instead of “drivers”.

I wonder how many passengers are actually going to call the guards 'ambassadors'? I'm sure you'll get a few funny looks, even by the guards themselves!

Does anyone else imagine these 'ambassadors' walking through the train offering out a certain individually wrapped chocolate?
Perhaps the next time I'm given an Uglie on Avanti I should say "you're really spoiling me, ambassador".

 

[Ianno87]

I wonder how many passengers are actually going to call the guards 'ambassadors'? I'm sure you'll get a few funny looks, even by the guards themselves!

"Ambassadors" is a good thing. It reinforces to the on-train staff that they are the public-facing image of the company, so actually sounds very appropriate to me.

 

[CreamNCookies]

I wonder how many passengers are actually going to call the guards 'ambassadors'? I'm sure you'll get a few funny looks, even by the guards themselves!

Does anyone else imagine these 'ambassadors' walking through the train offering out a certain individually wrapped chocolate?
Perhaps the next time I'm given an Uglie on Avanti I should say "you're really spoiling me, ambassador".

I've never gone up to a host on LNER and called them a customer host. I think majority of people will just say something along the lines of "excuse me..." and then ask their question.

 

[Bletchleyite]

"Ambassadors" is a good thing. It reinforces to the on-train staff that they are the public-facing image of the company, so actually sounds very appropriate to me.

It's one of those things where something that makes a good point internally (reminding staff that they are indeed ambassadors of the company's reputation) sounds awful to customers. You don't of course need the same term to be used internally as externally.

They could perhaps have done with getting Best Impressions in to deal with all this, to be honest. FirstGroup corporate suits wouldn't know trendy if it fell on them from one of their competitors' aircraft, and really they need to accept that and get people in who can.

 

[Master29]

For those of you calling this service pretentious, have you seen some of LNER and GWRs branding? From their adverts and posters - and name - you’d think they were trying to recreate the golden age of steam travel, only with their 2017 built bullet trains that don’t exactly fit with the retro image.

I’m glad this 21st century train company actually looks like a 21st century company for once.

The IET doesn't fit many positive retro images I can think of, in fact not many up to date ones either. It's a sort of emperors new clothes-ism of a train. It's almost as if they're comparing it to the A4's. I agree about the website.

 

[island]

Well, either they issue Unpaid Fare Notices or they allow the passenger to purchase their ticket at their destination. Given that, upon further inspection, the Passenger Charter mentions both, I’m beginning to think the only way to truly find out is to hop on a southbound train from Morpeth with three £20 notes in hand and your debit card at home.

That sounds like you're trying to travel on a train without having previously paid your fare and with intent to avoid the payment thereof, because you fully know how they want you to pay your fare and are deliberately trying to not have any accepted payment method on you.

 

[notadriver]

I think drivers will be called ‘customer drivers’ - what does that mean exactly?

 

[Ianno87]

I think drivers will be called ‘customer drivers’ - what does that mean exactly?

Because you don't drive the train for the fun of it. You drive the train to get passengers to their destination.

It instils the purpose of the role.

 

[Bald Rick]

I think drivers will be called ‘customer drivers’ - what does that mean exactly?

I’m tempted to say not a driver @notadriver

 

[capitalconnect]

I think drivers will be called ‘customer drivers’ - what does that mean exactly?

How ridiculous. Just when i think job titles can not get any more ridiculous they come along with this. Well i think "Customer Driver" is an even more ridiculous name that "Customer Experience Ambassador" in my opinion. Who comes up with such job titles.

What is wrong with just calling them a "Driver" or "Train Driver" like pretty much ever TOC in the UK and across the world has done for decades.

I do not understand why these companies feel the need to come up with such ridiculous job titles nowadays. I think it is pretty much guaranteed that no passenger or staff member will call them a "Customer Driver" at any time. Why not just use "Driver" or "Train Driver" which the public are all familiar with rather than a title that nobody is going to use.

It reminds me of a few years ago when Waitrose and John Lewis changed to Waitrose & Partners and John Lewis & Partners but yet nobody ever calls them that. This will be the same situation with Lumo here. They should job titles that people are familiar with.

 

[New2rail1]

It's probably a good thing @capitalconnect that it will not be a job title you'll be holding then.

I went for a job with ECTL knowing what the job title was and what the role involved. I'm happy to have it virtually in the bag pending a medical result.

I'm excited for the role. The customers who ride with us will probably not call me a customer experience ambassador, there will probably be people who call me "oi". And I'll just do my job the best I can.

Like a few others I'm fortunate to have made it this far, and I'll be sure to make it know to my employer that I'm thankful for the opportunity.

 

[dk1]

I think drivers will be called ‘customer drivers’ - what does that mean exactly?

I think I’m going to be sick.

 

[43066]

It's one of those things where something that makes a good point internally (reminding staff that they are indeed ambassadors of the company's reputation) sounds awful to customers. You don't of course need the same term to be used internally as externally.

They could perhaps have done with getting Best Impressions in to deal with all this, to be honest. FirstGroup corporate suits wouldn't know trendy if it fell on them from one of their competitors' aircraft, and really they need to accept that and get people in who can.

Agreed. Our guards are called Train Managers which is meaningful to the public and succinctly describes their role. Internally we generally refer to them as guards because it’s shorter and obviously has a very specific meaning within railway parlance.

As far as I’m concerned, if I can’t immediately discern someone’s role from their job title, that strikes me as a poor use of language. In this case even “customer host” would do a better job of describing the job the person does and would be preferable to “ambassador”.

"Ambassadors" is a good thing. It reinforces to the on-train staff that they are the public-facing image of the company, so actually sounds very appropriate to me.

But that’s just it, *any* employee; from
The MD downwards is potentially an ambassador for their company in the right circumstances. It provides no insight into what the person’s role actually is.

They are hardly going to lose sleep about upsetting some people on a railway forum. I hardly think anyone will refuse to travel with them because they used job titles which are deemed "silly", even people on this forum.

All very true of course!

 

[Nova1]

Because you don't drive the train for the fun of it. You drive the train to get passengers to their destination.

Do they get a different name when running ECS?

 

[43066]

Because you don't drive the train for the fun of it.

Agreed. Only partly for the fun of it, mostly to get paid.

 

[Ianno87]

Do they get a different name when running ECS?

Because the ECS only runs for the ultimate purpose of coming on or off a passenger service

 

[Bletchleyite]

Because you don't drive the train for the fun of it. You drive the train to get passengers to their destination.

It instils the purpose of the role.

Does the purpose of a non passenger facing role matter provided it is done correctly?

 

[Ianno87]

Does the purpose of a non passenger facing role matter provided it is done correctly?

The job title forms part of instilling doing it correctly, remembering who you are doing your job for.

 

[ScottGallagher]

The name is really trying to just follow a trend of recent successful abstract names such as Uber,Bolt,Monzo ,Go daddy.

However parts of this website are just cringeworthy platitude sickness with bad grammar. Surely it's someones job to proof read this stuff before going live?

 

[Alfonso]

By contrast I'm genuinely disappointed that this is basically a very conventional TOC (albeit with only one price level of walk-up fares) and nothing really innovative is being tried at all. It does look decent, but it's basically Hull Trains to Edinburgh, not a real attempt at copying e.g. Ouigo.

Always had the impression that FirstGroup were incapable of being genuinely innovative, and I think that impression is confirmed here.

To recreate the Ouigo experience there's nothing to stop passengers turning up half an hour early for imaginary check in or throwing away some money for a pretend baggage fee

 

[Bletchleyite]

The name is really trying to just follow a trend of recent successful abstract names such as Uber,Bolt,Monzo ,Go daddy.

The reason for this is largely that speculative domain squatters have already registered many of the meaningful domain names, so you are left making something up.

However parts of this website are just cringeworthy platitude sickness with bad grammar. Surely it's someones job to proof read this stuff before going live?

However hard they try FirstGroup suits are never going to lead something that actually acts like a startup - a large corporation is incapable of that culture. When you click through to who's responsible, it's about as corporate as you can possibly imagine.

It is in many ways a shame (if we are going to have Open Access) that the structure of the rail industry (as distinct from road transport) makes it basically impossible for a true startup to get anywhere due to the massive costs involved. A true startup might be truly innovative - this is just a classic OAO give or take the absence of 1st. This doesn't seem to be the case in Germany as it seems fairly easy to hire locomotives and drivers and a huge market of cheap old RIC coaches to tart up and roll out. For instance in fare terms the only thing innovative about Lumo is the absence of an off peak walk up fare - but we all know the TOCs would do that in a flash if they could.

 

[TheBigD]

To recreate the Ouigo experience there's nothing to stop passengers turning up half an hour early for imaginary check in or throwing away some money for a pretend baggage fee

You forgot about the lovely 3 abreast seating on some of there sets...

ouigo interior at DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo. Privacy, Simplified.

duckduckgo.com

 

[Bletchleyite]

You forgot about the lovely 3 abreast seating on some of there sets...

ouigo interior at DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo. Privacy, Simplified.

duckduckgo.com

To be fair it's 3+1. Families like the 3+2 on LNR services, so they may well like that, too - and the 1 side is likely to be very popular indeed with solo travellers.

The reason for it is that it's a converted first class coach with a sunk aisle, so they can't just swap it to 2+2. It's not to be deliberately rubbish.

 

[lammergeier]

It's probably a good thing @capitalconnect that it will not be a job title you'll be holding then.

I went for a job with ECTL knowing what the job title was and what the role involved. I'm happy to have it virtually in the bag pending a medical result.

I'm excited for the role. The customers who ride with us will probably not call me a customer experience ambassador, there will probably be people who call me "oi". And I'll just do my job the best I can.

Like a few others I'm fortunate to have made it this far, and I'll be sure to make it know to my employer that I'm thankful for the opportunity.

Congratulations on the job. Sounds like you have the right attitude. The railway needs something like this and I hope it is a success

 

[Alfonso]

You forgot about the lovely 3 abreast seating on some of there sets...

ouigo interior at DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo. Privacy, Simplified.

duckduckgo.com

Apologies, my bad!

 

[gallafent]

Waitrose and John Lewis changed to Waitrose & Partners and John Lewis & Partners

John Lewis & Partners used to be “John Lewis Partnership” at least, so that's not really much of a stretch … as for the purveyors of groceries Messrs. Waite and Rose, on the other hand, not so much. Anyway …

Emphasising the unusual ownership and business structure of the John Lewis Group by explicitly mentioning the “partners” in the full version of the name, feels like a good thing to me. It adds meaning without subtracting anything, since, of course, people still call them “John Lewis” and “Waitrose”.

In the same way, I'm sure Lumo operatives will not be referred to by the full version of their job title all the time, and yet having it there does make a difference to the mentality of people both inside and outside the company when thinking about the roles.

So I think the job titles are fine.

I also hope the innovative aspects of the model work, get people off the internal UK flights, and can be expanded to other routes when the right business opportunities (and possibilities for modal shift) arise!