The Korea Local Administration Review

This study analyzes the relationship between employees’ understanding of customers and their response to customers for the increasing number of elderly customers using subways at the time of the post-aged society. The research question is as follows. If the customer service staff understands the difficulties and vulnerabilities of elderly customers, do they respond well to them? For this study, a survey was conducted on employees of Seoul Metro, a local public enterprise that operates subways in Seoul, which are used the most by the elderly in Korea. According to the survey results, even if the customer service staff understands the customer situation such as the vulnerabilities of the elderly customer, it does not mean that they respond well to them immediately. As a mediating factor, there should be a perception that it is important to treat elderly customers, and this perception was moderated according to the frequency of serving elderly customers. Based on these results, it is necessary to recognize the importance of responding to customers with vulnerabilities such as the elderly. At the same time, it is important to properly design the extent to which customer service staff responds to elderly customers.