Customer-Focused Service Guarantees and Transparency Practices (2018)

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4Background Several public transit agencies in North America and abroad are adopting customer-focused practices. Customer-focused practices come in many different forms that may affect various aspects of the customer experience, and full discussion of what defines and is encompassed in the customer experience is beyond the scope of this synthesis. The two practices discussed in this synthesis are service guarantees and customer-focused transparency. Put simply, a service guarantee is a statement made by a transit agency about the level or quality of service it will provide to customers. Service guarantees may come in the form of mission statements, values lists, customer charters, or similar declarations. Some service guarantees may promise that the transit agency will take an action in the event the guarantee was not met (e.g., the transit agency may offer refunds when a passenger’s trip is delayed by 30 min or more). Customer-focused transparency is another type of customer-focused practice. Whereas a service guarantee is focused on an individual passenger’s experience, customer-focused transparency is usually focused on reporting aggregated transit agency performance. For transparent reporting to be considered customer focused, it must include performance metrics that reflect an aspect of a customer’s transit experience (e.g., timeliness of service or courtesy and helpfulness of transit agency staff). Although some transit agencies have adopted more customer-focused practices, there is a limited amount of research that documents the experiences of these transit agencies. The last major TCRP synthesis project that examined how transit agencies are working to be more customer focused was published in 2002: TCRP Synthesis 45: Customer-Focused Transit: A Synthesis of Transit Practice (Potts 2002). More research has been published focusing on Canadian (e.g., Giard 2002, Adams 2015) and European (Miller 1995, Lidén 2004, Neugebauer 2009) transit systems than on transit systems in the United States. This is largely because of the relatively rare but maturing customer-focused practices within U.S. transit agencies. Objective and Scope This report aims to provide readers with an up-to-date synthesis of service guarantees and customer-focused transparency practices at North American transit agencies. This synthesis documents the nature and prevalence of service guarantees and customer-focused transparency among transit providers in North America and augments the discussion by including informa- tion from a few European transit providers. This synthesis documents the following topics related to service guarantees and customer- focused transparency: C h a p t e r 1 Introduction

Introduction 5 • The current state of practice, • Implementation strategies, • Perceived benefits and challenges, and • Lessons learned. To obtain this information, the synthesis team collected data through three methods: • A scan of the industry and relevant literature, • A survey of North American transit agencies with either a customer service guarantee or customer-focused transparency, and • In-depth case examples for four North American transit agencies. Definition of Terms Before beginning the discussion of service guarantees and customer-focused transparency, several terms must be defined. • Service guarantee Any explicit transit agency commitment to a quality customer experience, regardless of whether the agency compensates or responds directly to individual customers in the event the com- mitment is not met. (Quality-of-service requirements under the ADA are not considered a customer service guarantee.) A transit agency has a service guarantee as long as the following criteria are met: – The statement is explicit (i.e., public)—internal procedures or policies that are not published to the public are not considered service guarantees. – The statement contains a commitment to provide a certain level of quality for a specific char- acteristic of a customer’s transit trip. For example, a transit agency may promise customers a clean and safe trip. This simple statement was considered a service guarantee for this synthesis. General statements about being reliable were not considered service guarantees. • Service guarantee with action A guarantee in which a transit agency promises to take some action to directly address a particular customer’s experience with a service problem. This action could be in the form of compensation, refund, or reimbursement (hereafter referred to as “remuneration”); arranging a complimentary or discounted trip on alternative transportation options; or some other activity the purpose of which is to address and resolve the customer’s particular experience of a service problem. • Remuneration Remuneration refers to any compensation (in the form of cash refunds or transit fare credits or refunds) that transit agencies issue to customers to compensate customers for experiencing a service failure or problem that is covered by transit agencies’ service guarantees. • Customer-focused transparency Customer-focused transparency refers to any open and public reporting updated at least annually that includes customer-focused metrics. A transit agency has customer-focused transparency if the following criteria are met: – Open and public: Reports are available to any member of the general public without needing to make a special request. – Updated at least annually: There must be 1 year or less between updates to the reports. – Reporting includes customer-focused metrics: The reported metrics must measure an aspect of the customer experience, for example: � On-time performance; � Headway adherence/reliability; � Excess wait time;

6 Customer-Focused Service Guarantees and transparency practices � Missed, canceled, or not operated trips; � Percent of scheduled time in operation (for automated systems); � Distance traveled between mechanical failures; � Passenger safety metrics (e.g., accidents, incidents, crimes); � Customer complaint rate; � Customer satisfaction score; and � Customer call center metrics (e.g., average time on hold). Technical Approach to Project The synthesis was conducted in three main phases. Scan of the Industry and Literature First, a scan of the industry and literature was conducted to identify previous research on the synthesis topics and understand the prevalence of service guarantees and customer-focused transparency in North America. Information was also collected from European transit agencies to provide an additional perspective. Survey of North American Transit Agencies Transit agencies with service guarantees or customer-focused transparency were recruited to participate in an online survey. Twenty-six transit agencies received the survey; 22 complete responses were received—an 85% response rate. Appendix A includes the complete questionnaire. A full list of surveyed transit agencies and their key characteristics is provided in Appendix B; Figure 1 provides a map. The survey was broken into three sections, and respondents’ answers to certain questions determined which sections were presented and what questions were asked. (Figure 2 provides a graphic depiction of the survey logic.) In section one, transit agen- cies provided basic information about their operation (e.g., location and modes operated). The survey defined service guarantee and asked respondents whether they had a service guarantee. If the transit agency answered that it has (or previously had) a service guarantee, the agency was taken to section two, which asked about the details of the service guarantee. Otherwise, the survey jumped to section three, which asked about customer-focused transparency. The survey defined customer-focused transparency and asked respondents whether they had customer- focused transparency. If the transit agency answered that it has (or previously had) customer- focused transparency, the survey asked for details. Otherwise, the survey jumped to the end, which asked whether the transit agency would be willing to be featured as a case example for this study. The survey collected information about service guarantees or customer-focused transparency, including: • Duration (i.e., how long the program was in place), • Rationale for implementation, • Perceived benefits and challenges, • Promotion and publication efforts, Twenty-two transit agencies responded to the survey (85% response rate), including: • 12 large agencies (1,000+ vehicles*) • 4 medium agencies (250–1,000 vehicles*) • 6 small agencies (fewer than 250 vehicles*) *Vehicle counts based on vehicles operated at maximum service.

Figure 1. Map of transit agencies that responded to the survey.

Figure 2. Survey flowchart.

Introduction 9 • Details concerning claims processing for service guarantees that provide customer remuneration, and • Details concerning the contents and practices of service guarantees and customer-focused transparency. The survey allowed transit agencies to define and report on their own perspectives of what represents a service guarantee or a customer-focused transparency practice in addition to those perspectives defined by the author. The synthesis team performed some basic quality assurance checks on the survey responses to ensure that transit agencies were not confused by any survey items. Any discrepancies identified by the synthesis team were discussed with transit agency representatives and resolved. Case Examples After the survey was complete, four transit agencies were selected as case examples that had well-developed transparency or service guarantee programs currently in effect and that provided a mix of transit agency sizes and transit modes operated: • Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority (Dayton RTA) in Dayton, Ohio; • San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) in San Francisco, California; • Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) in Boston, Massachusetts; and • GO Transit in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Selected details from each case example are included in the report, as appropriate. Full case example write-ups are included in Chapter 6. Report Organization This report is broken into seven topical chapters (the results of the transit agency survey and relevant highlights from case examples are included in Chapters 3 through 5): • Chapter 1: Introduction. • Chapter 2: Literature Review—Discusses general and transit-specific findings on service guar- antees and transparency. • Chapter 3: Service Guarantees—Presents the results of the service guarantee section of the survey. • Chapter 4: Customer-Focused Transparency—Presents the results of the customer-focused transparency section of the survey. • Chapter 5: Combined Role of Service Guarantees and Customer-Focused Transparency— Discusses how service guarantees and customer-focused transparency may work together, based on the results of the survey. • Chapter 6: Case Examples—Presents an in-depth review of the practices at four North Ameri- can transit agencies. • Chapter 7: Conclusions—Provides a summary of findings and suggestions for future research.