PTSI Transportation
Passenger and On Board Services
Passenger-focused Customer Service
Leading to Customer-focused Passenger Services!
Is it Quality Customer Service or simply Hospitality?
At the end of the day, they are really quite similar concepts. After all, the same ticket seller, conductor, service attendant, waiter, or train or bus operator who is comfortable welcoming guests to his or her home with a genuine smile of friendship is quite likely to treat your passengers in the same way!
PTSI Transportation and its team of transportation and service professionals have long been involved in the art and science of making passengers welcome in every respect. Our heritage goes back to the famed Pullman Company, whose very name is synonymous with quality in customer service (several of our professionals worked for Pullman and one was among the last Directors of the Pullman Company). What but a company obsessed with excellence would take two pages of its service manual to instruct in the proper method of serving beer in lounge cars? And at its peak, operated 10,000 sleeping cars, hotels on wheels, every night!
Whether it be training, observation, attire, signage, cartography, information provision, mystery shopping, customer representation and advocacy, service design, amenities, or on board food and beverage service management, our team has been there and done that. Our professionals, who are, of course, also customers, have managed all of these functions.
Quality Customer Service is:
An assemblage of seamless provision of about a dozen steps in the planning and execution of a journey. Some of these steps, and the management functions which are necessary to ensure their adequate provision, are:
- Information provision - paper, electronic, telephone, in person
- Ticketing Provision – electronic, vending, in person (service rather than revenue protection aspects)
- The Welcome – at stations, on trains (including ease of navigation)
- On Board Services (includes food & beverage service, amenities, housekeeping, understanding customer needs and desires)
- Logistics – planning, preparation and purchasing, food safety and security, technology, stock and revenue protection
- User-Friendliness for all (including the disabled, first time users, youth, seniors, other special needs)
- Passenger Representation – internal groups, statutory groups, ad hoc groups, advocacies
- Service Monitoring and Mystery Shopping.
On Board Services Offerings:
PTSI Transportation is one of the few consultancies in North America with a strong background in the almost-lost art of on board service. Our officers go back to the days of gracious dining and luxury accommodations, yet are as contemporary as a modern electronic point-of-sale system! Food and beverage service, and even sleeping car service, is our forte…
- …from analyses and reviews of existing services (to improve revenue yield and customer satisfaction), to complete operation of on board services
- …from rolling trolleys (low-tech or high-tech), snack bars, and commuter bar cars to executive trains, deluxe tour trains, privately owned cars (and yes, our affiliates even cater the Royal train in a major European nation)
- …from design of new foodservice cars to modifications to existing cars for functionality and customer acceptance
- …from food safety and security, including HAACP and other programs, to revenue security and real-time accounting
- …from pre-packaged to “a la minute”, and from cook-chill to sous vide
Our On Board Service Affiliations:
International Rail Catering Group
PTSI Transportation is proud to be the first North American member of the International Rail Catering Group, an independent, international, non-governmental organization for leading railway catering operators. Its members are currently from Europe, North Africa, and now, North America, and its aim is to have colleagues on all continents join in its efforts to increase the quality of onboard catering and accommodation services to train passengers, making an environmentally friendly rail journey experience at many levels. The IRCG was founded in Sweden in 1965 and is now based in Prague, Czech Republic.
On Board Solutions LTD
We are also affiliated with the leading United Kingdom on board service consultancy, On Board Solutions, a passenger rail consultancy specializing in the development, delivery and support of all aspects of passenger service and facilities. These include on board service design and implementation, design and development of integrated service equipment and routines, training, development and support of front line staff and managers, development and management of stations, development of passenger amenities, food service supply chain and logistics control systems and processes.
