Rapid Growth of CX Across America

by Aaron Weinstein, Transit CX, August 2025

All across North America, transit agencies are launching CX programs to improve customer satisfaction, attract riders, and improve morale. In all, more than 60 transit agencies have embarked on a CX journey in the United States and Canada.

Here is an update on many of the programs:

LA Metro launched its CX Program in 2020 to sharpen its focus on customers. Metro conducts CX surveys to identify top pain points and creates CX Plans to remedy the issues. Metro's most recent 2023 CX Plan includes initiatives to make Metro safe, clean, comfortable, reliable, and easy. To date, the LA Metro CX Plans have spawned over 50 initiatives to improve the customer experience. One of the initiatives, for example, is to deploy hundreds of transit ambassadors on the system to enhance safety and help customers. Beyond the annual CX plans, the LA program has tracts for improving CX culture, establishing KEI's (Key Experience Indicators), and institutionalizing CX into business processes. It also plays a key role in preparing LA Metro to welcome visitors around the world for the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics events, and to provide them with an excellent customer experience.

MARTA in Atlanta also has an extensive CX program. It named its first Chief Customer Experience Officer (CXO) in 2020 to elevate customer voices and prioritize the customer experience in MARTA’s operations and capital program. The MARTA CXO is certified as a customer experience professional (CCXP) by the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA), and serves as an internal customer advocate, partnering with leaders across all business units to ensure that customers are at the center of business decisions. The MARTA CX team includes units for innovation, customer services, sustainability, and customer insights. It oversees a Riders’ Advisory Council, homeless outreach, transit ambassadors, and special events planning. MARTA incorporated multiple CX improvements in its FY23 budget, including improvements to fare collection and customer information, and a SMART restroom program that will alert staff when supplies are low or the space needs cleaning.

A new Customer Experience program at DART in Dallas grew out of the DART 2024 Strategic Plan, which called for DART to engage with customers "so we can build advocates and partners for life.” At DART, Customer Experience is an agency-wide responsibility supported by staff in the Strategy and Transformation Department, which reports to the Chief of Staff. Customer Experience at DART encompasses not only external riders but also internal staff, recognizing that the quality of the employee experience directly impacts the experience of the customer. Shortly after the Strategic Plan was published, DART established a 360° Customer Experience Collaboration team to align insights and initiatives to remedy customer pain points. DART also engaged Transit CX to review DART business processes and culture to identify areas that could be more closely tied to customer needs. This review covered 20 DART business practices ranging from the budget process to product design and service standards, and from hiring and training to employee recognition programs. This review will culminate in a multi-year roadmap of activities to modify business processes and culture to make customer centricity ubiquitous in everything DART does.

Trinity Metro in Fort Worth is another Texas agency with a CX program. It includes travel training for new customers or those with special needs, and Transit ENVOYs at transfer centers and rail stations to assist customers. This initiative fosters a more customer-friendly environment and ensures that riders feel supported throughout their journey.

Additionally, Trinity Metro has invested in improving its stations and transfer centers, ensuring they are well-equipped to serve passengers efficiently.

SEPTA in Philadelphia also has a CX program. SEPTA created a unified CX department in 2025, bringing together different teams responsible for customer service, consumer research, digital products, and physical wayfinding and station navigation. The new team is focused on better utilizing insights gleaned from surveys, focus groups, and customer feedback to improve the full customer journey. As a part of this initiative the agency is transitioning to a more customer friendly wayfinding system, beginning with a brand-new website, app, and signage in 2024. Special emphases include making its newly unified “SEPTA Metro” network of rail transit lines easier to navigate and introducing multiple improved methods of communicating about bus detours.

The SEPTA CX team advocates on behalf of SEPTA customers, conducting surveys and focus groups, bringing customers into decision-making processes, listening carefully, and maintaining standards for timely response to customer feedback. Key focal points are providing accurate real-time information, finding opportunities for art and entertainment into the passenger experience, and meeting the needs of the diverse customers who ride SEPTA. Internally, the SEPTA CX team promotes the idea that all employees own the Customer Experience, and that every team member is providing essential internal service (to other employees) or external service (to paying customers).

Also in Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh Regional Transit (PRT) established a CX Department within their Operations division in 2022. Customer Experience is one of three core values of PRT’s Strategic Plan adopted in 2023. PRT's CX Department uses customer satisfaction surveys to identify and remedy top pain points. They also work on resolving complaints, and have decreased discourtesy complaints by sending operators with high complaint levels to CX and de-escalation training. They have also trained supervisors and frontline employees, improved employee communications, and expanded recognition programs. Interestingly, to enhance Employee Experience (EX), PRT uses real time QR code surveys at operator comfort stops. They also do CX ride checks to get the leadership team out into the field to experience both the customer journey and the experience of employees.

In Missouri, St. Louis Metro Transit has an interdepartmental CX team to cultivate a customer-first approach to service. The St. Louis Metro CX program aims to understand customer needs, reduce effort and friction, and create positive interactions. CX techniques include community connect events, online surveys and in-person customer feedback. One recent effort to advance customer experience at St. Louis Metro Transit was a wayfinding pilot program to help riders who are blind or have low vision, do not speak English, or are new to using transit or the St. Louis area. The pilot includes active solicitation of feedback from customers to judge the success of each tool and consider widespread implementation throughout the St. Louis transit system.

In the State of Washington, Community Transit in Snohomish County and Sound Transit in Seattle were early leaders in the CX movement. Community Transit hired their first CX Director in 2016. They compile information on the voice of the customer and test innovative approaches to meeting their needs. They also work to create a seamless experience across their region and train employees to practice walking in a customer's shoes. Sound Transit appointed its first Chief Passenger Experience Officer in 2018, who acts as an advocate for passengers across the agency. The CX research and innovation team deploys and tests new technologies, conducts passenger research, and uses research results to improve the passenger experience. A CX wayfinding and signage team ensures that signs are simple, seamless, and intuitive. A passenger care team provides customer support, sends rider alerts, and manages accessibility services. And a passenger success team is responsible for the agency’s fare ambassador program and helps support passengers in crisis and/or experiencing homelessness.

Elsewhere in the State of Washington, Pierce Transit is executing a Customer Experience Plan that includes improvements to the website, transit center and bus stop wayfinding, customer service availability, and training to empower frontline staff to be agency ambassadors. They are also installing QR codes to facilitate feedback on the customer experience. And C-TRAN in Clark County has a CX program that includes customer service on-street/outreach support, sales, travel training for seniors, visual wayfinding and gathering rider feedback. They also partner with Aira to provide visual wayfinding assistance to people who are blind, including riders to the State School for the Blind in Vancouver, Washington.

The UTA transit system in the State of Utah has a CX Team that was created in 2018. The UTA CX Team works to improve UTA wayfinding, real time information, and bus stop improvements. UTA uses Customer Satisfaction Surveys to better understand how UTA is doing with the changes it is implementing. In 2024, UTA completed its first ever CX Action Plan that looks at a customer's entire journey door to door and their mindsets during various stages of the journey. This plan uses customer vignettes to help UTA more deeply understand the lived experience of UTA customers. Recommendations from the Action Plan are moving towards implementation starting in 2025.

In December 2024, the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA) in Ohio launched a new CX department to drive innovation and enhance the customer experience by understanding and advocating for customer needs and overseeing a balanced scorecard approach to performance. GCRTA gathers customer insights through observation, direct experience, customer feedback, quarterly customer experience surveys (randomized, on-board intercept format), and an Employee Riders Council (employees who ride GCRTA). GCRTA is also introducing a process for employees to ‘Go to Gemba’ by walking in the shoes of customers and providing real-time feedback on their experiences.

Elsewhere in Ohio, COTA in the Columbus area is starting up a CX program, as is TARTA in the Toledo area, and SORTA in the Cincinnati area.

The Capital Area Transportation Authority (CATA) in Lansing, Michigan hired its first CX manager in 2018, and prioritized customer experience excellence among the agency’s five strategic goals the following year. All employees are expected to use best practices that lead to new and returning customers. Customer experience representatives complete multiple training modules through ServiceSkills — an e-Learning program, and CX staff serve as Certified Tourist Ambassadors through the Greater Lansing Convention and Visitors Bureau. Knowing and understanding the community’s rich history and points of pride result in outstanding CX performance and service delivery. In January 2023, CATA launched Listening Bus — onboard sessions where Customer Experience, Marketing, Planning and Operations staff survey riders about service quality. Survey data is shared internally to give CATA riders/taxpayers a voice in service design and quality.

The Connecticut Department of Transportation (CTDOT) has a CX website with information about their CX program, including its first CX Action Plan adopted in 2023 and a 2024 progress report. To develop their Action Plan, CTDOT gathered input via social media, stakeholder interviews, community meetings, and townhall events, surveys of customers and front-line employees, focus groups, and pop-up events at transit facilities.

The Chicago Transit Authority uses a cross-functional team to improve wayfinding, language access, and feedback loops with customers. Its membership includes Strategy and Innovation, Communications, and Scheduling & Service Planning.

San Francisco MTA plans is launching a Customer Experience program to build on record customer satisfaction survey results and make Customer Experience a North Star of the organization. To lay a strong foundation for the program, in 2024 SFMTA engaged Transit CX to assess current listening posts, review current business processes and culture, and develop a multi-year Roadmap of activities to enhance customer centricity. SFMTA also worked with Transit CX to offer a series of Brown Bag Learning Sessions on Customer Experience concepts and techniques.

Other US transit agencies that have CX programs include Metrolink in Southern California, MBTA in Boston, the Maryland Transit Administration, New York MTA, KCATA in Kansas City, Missouri, and BJCTA-MAX Transit in Birmingham, Alabama.

Also, New Jersey Transit has a "Customer Advocate" whose job it is to advocate for the interests of NJ Transit riders, including gathering feedback, identifying issues, working with NJ Transit officials to address concerns, and reporting to the Board of Directors.

North of the border in Canada, Vancouver has had a very comprehensive CX program. It includes a five-year Customer Experience Action Plan that reimagines the customer journey, outlines a roadmap forward, and includes a report card on implementation of previous initiatives.

The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) has a Marketing and CX department that includes Customer Service, Customer Communications, Digital Communications, Design & Wayfinding, Printing, and Special Events. Areas of emphasis currently include wayfinding, trip planning, incident response, e-alerts, the SafeTTC app to report safety concerns, and implementation of a 5-Year Service and Customer Experience Action Plan (2024-2028).

Transit is not alone in establishing CX programs to improve the delivery of government services. The growth of CX in public transit is part of a broader trend to make government services more user-friendly. Even the federal government has had a CX program to improve the delivery of services to the public.

CX is a tough business. It requires organizational and cultural changes that can take transit agencies out of their comfort zones. As transit CX continues to develop in America, it will be essential to get buy-in at all levels, provide CX staff with the resources and mandate needed to accomplish changes, and continue an obsessive focus on customer experiences to overcome the many obstacles to change. America's transit agencies are off to a good start though as they build diverse CX programs - each with their own flavor and focus. We will watch to see which organizational models have the most impact over the next few years as transit continues to work to enhance the customer experience and recover ridership.

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Want to chat about how to create a new customer experience program at your agency, or revamp an existing one to maximize impact?

DM me at AaronW@TransitCX.org. I can help you get your program properly chartered, socialized, and funded to give you the standing and resources you need to be successful.