this guest blog post talks about how to improve the customer experience of tourists on public transit

Check out this updated blog post on the growing number of transit agencies in North America that have customer experience programs. Originally published in Mass Transit magazine.

Here are some highlights of my experiences traveling by transit in Vietnam and Japan. Some great experiences, some not so good, but always valuable in that it gets me thinking about ways to improve transit back in America. One highlight of my trip was the Shinkansen bullet train in Japan, which reaches 175 mph. This has always been on my bucket list: One highlight of the trip: The Japanese Shinkansen bullet train But before I talk about Japan, my transit travelog actually sta

13-minute primer on how to build a Customer Experience program at your transit agency

How reliable is reliable enough? How clean is clean enough? How safe is safe enough? To answer these kinds of questions, transit agencies will often compare Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) with peer transit agencies. There are, however, a variety of pitfalls to be avoided. For example, interagency comparisons will not be valid if the contexts are different. If one agency operates in exclusive rights of way, and another agency operates on the street, is it fair to compare o

Most organizations are flooded with customer feedback, and the challenge is knowing what to do with it all. Maybe you have a steady...

You can maximize the effectiveness of your Customer Experience (CX) program by linking CX with your organization's annual budget process. The budget process is a place where tradeoffs are considered and decisions made that have a huge impact on the customer experience. Make sure that customer voices have a role in that process and budget decisions are aligned with the results of your Customer Experience surveys. Likewise for both operating and capital budget decisions. One fa

Statistically-sound customer surveys should be the cornerstone of any CX program. The main objectives are: To identify the top pain points to remedy; and To gauge the success of CX initiatives over time. Your customers may experience hundreds or even thousands of pain points, but a CX Plan can only focus on a small number. Otherwise, an organization may spread itself too thin. It's often said that if you try to do everything for everyone, you'll end up doing nothing for nobod

Any CX program is incomplete without User Experience (UX) Testing of products. Are you preparing for your next order of new buses or trains? (Or renovating old ones?) Planning a new website? New apps? Designing new signage? Buying new ticket vending machines? Installing new bus stop shelters? Developing new internal administrative systems? Today's consumers experience unprecedented convenience - purchasing products and services at the click of a mouse and having them show up