A White-Glove State of Mind Frank Monaco, a labor consultant, provides customer-service training for property managers around the city. He worked recently with the doormen in the lobby of 69 Fifth Avenue. As New York City's luxury buildings wage battle over who can deliver the most outsize amenities to residents, some are expanding their focus to include the doormen who quietly usher in residents, handle the packages and hail the cabs. For older buildings in neighborhoods that used to be solidly middle-class, like the Upper West Side, keeping up with luxury standards also means rethinking how staff members should treat tenants. Newer, well-heeled residents often expect customer service more commonly found in a five-star hotel than a prewar apartment building. Gone are the days of the doorman who doubled as a buddy at the desk, chatting about the Yankees game or asking how the children are doing. Residents expect white-glove service in buildings that, a generation ago, were much less fussy. To keep up with changing demands, some older upscale buildings are training staff members, updating uniforms, installing concierge desks and adding high-tech communication systems. For the roughly 10,000 doormen working in 3,200 buildings in the city, the changes in recent years have reset the relationships they have with the residents who pass them by each day. "Younger people with money are moving into buildings," said Frank Monaco, a retired doorman who also worked as a representative for Local 32BJ, the service workers union, "and they want to make it a white-glove building. One of the things I hear from management is they want the staff to be very attentive. They don't want them to be distracted by reading the paper. In the past it was different. People were a little bit more laid back, but that's changing. Doormen often start out as porters or handymen and work their way up through a building, staying there for decades. Unlike staff members in the hotel industry, which has long invested heavily in customer-service training, doormen are generally trained in-house. But many newer luxury buildings have embraced the hotel industry's hospitality model - not always to the delight of doormen, some of whom have only begrudgingly participated in training sessions. The Related Companies, which owns and operates luxury residential high-rises, spends more than $100,000 a year on employee training and spent more than $1 million when it overhauled its training program a decade ago, according to the company. New hires take a weeklong course to learn how to color-code residents based on their personality type. A red-coded resident needs to be validated and heard, whereas a blue resident simply wants the facts. Building staff members wear ear buds, so that if, for example, a porter spots a resident leaving his apartment, he can radio the front desk to suggest that someone hail a cab. Residents can sign up for a service called the Invisible Butler, for watering plants, supervising the housekeeper and even packing and shipping items that a resident forgot to bring on a trip. "It really is like walking into the Ritz-Carlton," said Gus Michael Farinella, who lives at One MiMa Tower, where a three-bedroom rental apartment was recently listed for $22,995 a month on Streeteasy.com. I feel like I live in a hotel, but it's home. When he moved in, Mr. Farinella was greeted with a bottle of Dom Pérignon. Residents of buildings whose staffs have had training programs describe eager, attentive service. Seven months ago, after they sold their five-bedroom apartment on LaGuardia Place for $5.725 million, Richard Allan and his wife, Lee, moved to the Strathmore, a Related high-rise rental on the Upper East Side, where service outshone the lackluster treatment they had experienced in other buildings. The couple enjoy the newfound attention. "In my son's building," said Mr. Allan of his son's Upper East Side doorman rental, "maybe if you drop dead on the sidewalk the doormen will call an ambulance." Tar Beaty noticed a marked improvement when he moved to 201 West 85th Street, a rental owned by Argo Real Estate, which has recently retrained its staff. "Compared to the old building, this is a gem," Mr. Beaty said. At his previous residence, also on the Upper West Side, the doormen paid little attention to the residents and instead chatted with friends. But a one-bedroom apartment at his new building rents for nearly $3,000 a month, significantly more than the $1,100 a month he paid for his previous one-bedroom. Rising housing costs certainly contribute to changing expectations. The average sale price for a condominium in Manhattan was $1.78 million in 2013, up from $795,911 a decade ago, according to CityRealty. The average rent in Manhattan was $3,797 a month in November, according to MNS. Older buildings are also stepping up their training, at least in part to help maintain property values. In 2013, the number of buildings that requested customer-service training from the service workers" union rose to 35, from 10 in 2012. At the Churchill, a midcentury co-op in Murray Hill, the board recently trained its 30 employees. "It's a 45-year-old building that needs to keep up with newer buildings," said Ronald Kaslow, the president of the co-op board, which also invested in new uniforms. Although about half the staff initially resisted the training, Mr. Kaslow said he noticed "a dramatic change" once they had completed it. Staff members were more patient, friendlier and more service-oriented. "We always put on a good show," he said. Now we put on a better show.