When I sat down with passenger focus earlier this month to discuss our first ever passenger satisfaction survey I was anxious and excited in equal measure. This survey is a crucial benchmark for Edinburgh Trams and gives us a excellent way of comparing our passenger satisfaction with our peers and competitors. The key headline, we scored 95% means, a great deal for our organisation. For 2014, it puts us fantastically close to the top of transport operators in the UK across tram, rail and bus. I am delighted, but not surprised about this result.
For me, the result is down to one thing; Edinburgh Trams staff. The survey captures all elements of the journey from cleanliness to safe driving and friendliness of staff to management of disruption. Every staff member up and down our organisation has had an input into this result and it is a tribute to them how our passengers have chosen to score the service. It doesn’t surprise me because I know how good the team is and I see it every day. I’d personally like to thank every one of the Edinburgh Trams team for their input.
So what are we doing well? Our passengers have told us:
- Overall satisfaction is very high at 95% (with 70% very satisfied)
- We score well on value for money and the safety of the driving
- Punctuality scores highly
- Our profile of passenger is quite young (32% in 16-25 age group) and subsequently we have a high use of technology for getting service information
- Our young passenger profile means 11% of passengers were travelling on a free pass which compares with 28% of bus users
Our mantra from the start has been simple, excellence for Edinburgh. When I sat down with my team and a blank piece of paper over two years ago, we simply had to be different from our competitors; the answer was passenger experience. Now a good tram interior and reliable service are prerequisites. What we set out for was more than that; the passenger interaction our staff have with our customers. That could be a driver waiting those extra 15 seconds for a passenger to buy a ticket or a well informed onboard staff member who can navigate somebody beyond Edinburgh trams. Our ambassadors for Edinburgh training programme took that one step further. We collaborated with businesses and attractions in Edinburgh so our people had first had experience and understanding of the tourist market and the different attractions and services on offer to visitors. This gave us a unique offering and our people continue to deliver superb customer service every day. The investment in training and recognising that our passengers want a staff member on every tram, is key. It has also led to an extremely low rate of fare evasion, which is helpful.
This approach is what sets us apart from our competitors. The quality of the service and the approach of our whole team of TSA’s, drivers, controllers, managers and support staff, have delivered these superb results. But we are not being complacent. As I write, we are testing a different approach to journey times, which we hope will allow us to put in a new timetable before the summer. Our early testing is showing there could be improvements of up to 5 minutes at certain times of day. A full review of the results will be needed before we make any permanent changes.
This is a good first attempt but we won’t stop our focus on improving until we score 100%. We are listening to our customers intently and with a number of positive changes on the horizon during 2015 I’m confident we can achieve even more.