CXO Profiles - Michael Helta, Maryland Transit Administration
- Aaron Weinstein
- Dec 2, 2025
- 4 min read
December 2025
Welcome to the sixth in a series of profiles of transit Customer Experience leaders. Today, I am featuring Michael Helta, Chief Customer Experience Officer (CXO) at the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA).
MTA launched its Customer Experience (CX) office two years ago in September 2023. Michael has built the program from the ground up with a focus on rider listening posts, customer-centric KPIs, internal process improvements, and improving real time passenger information across six modes of travel.
In addition, Michael and his team created the agency’s first ever Customer Experience Action Plan, published in July 2025. The CX Action Plan focuses on eight key areas: Service Reliability, Safety, Accessibility & Navigation, Transit App Experience, Disruption Communications, Cleanliness & Comfort, Fare Collection, and Rider Engagement. And it includes over 30 short term initiatives – all targeted to be completed within a year. The agency plans to publish a new CX Action Plan every year to assure it is dynamic and aligns with what the riders are currently experiencing.
Building a CX Program
Every transit customer experience program I have studied is unique, and Maryland Transit Administration no exception. The CX program at the MTA is comprised of three units:
Performance Management Office: This office focuses on the quantitative aspects of CX, tracking metrics like on-time performance (OTP), and collecting data to inform decision-making. That data is used to improve performance for all six operating modes and even the administration side of the house. The goal is to continually improve outcomes for riders.
Office of Rider Experience: This team collects qualitative feedback from riders through surveys, interviews, and observations. The goal is to inject rider voices back into the agency to give riders a seat at the table where decisions are made. In the first year, the rider-talker team recorded over 1,200 in depth conversations with MTA’s riders. Insights from these discussions helped guide which initiatives were selected for the CX Action Plan. This team also works closely with front line staff to become aware of staff experiences.
Rider engagement Service Information Office: This office manages real-time passenger information systems, ensuring that riders have access to accurate and up-to-date information about their trips. The goal is that the rider should know everything about their trip, at all times, so that they can make an informed decision as to how they will complete their journey. There should never be a thought of “where is my bus, where is it going, why isn’t it here.”
A Journey Towards CX
Michael's journey into the world of transit began with a desire to make a positive impact on his community. After working as a case manager for at-risk youth and overseeing a volunteer in-home repair program for the elderly, Michael decided to tap in to his passion for helping people on a larger scale. Michael went back to school to get a master's degree in community planning and became interested in public transit because of its "power to impact not only individuals but entire ecosystems."
Michael's passion led to MTA, where Michael's career progressed from Capital Programming, to Planning, Project Development, and eventually Chief Innovation Officer (CIO). As CIO, Michael improved the quality and dissemination of real-time arrival information and delay advisories across digital signage, apps, websites, and other media. Michael also oversaw the development of an agencywide data warehouse of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Once the warehouse was in place the innovation office used Microsoft’s Power BI platform to communicate information internally to drive process improvements to ultimately move the needle on agency metrics. Some successes included improving OTP by over 20%, reducing mean distance between failures across the fleets, improved ADA message compliance, reduced ghost buses, and improved real-time prediction availability to above 95% for all vehicles.
Leadership Style
Michael believes in the adage to "surround yourself with people smarter than you," giving his team latitude to utilize their talents to achieve the department's CX vision.
In addition, Michael believes in listening to front-line staff, who often have valuable insights into the rider experience. To build on this they hired a former bus operator to be on their rider talker team to better understand the role front-line staff plays and the situations they encounter.
Michael also believes in building strong relationships within the transit industry to tap into best practices and often reaches out to peer agencies for guidance. He also led a push to join two different industry benchmarking groups to further build relationships. He advises "this is a small industry, so create a network – you never know when you'll need it." In addition, Michael believes in looking beyond the transit industry for inspiration and ideas for how to respond to customers, when to respond to them, and how to gauge their needs.
Challenges and Opportunities
Despite progress in building the CX program, Michael acknowledges that there are still challenges to overcome. One of the biggest hurdles is gaining the necessary buy-in from other departments within the organization, especially when their staff already have a full docket of work. Michael and his team rely on "persuasion (backed by data) to create positive movement," and identifying smart ways to accomplish more while simultaneously streamlining to reduce the burden on responsible staff. Michael says "our goal is to be a catalyst for change but we are also no stranger to rolling up our sleeves to work side by side with those we are creating solutions for."
A Bright Future for CX in Transit
At MTA, Michael made a sustained effort to socialize the idea of Customer Experience and gives kudos to his employer for creating a CX department.
From just a handful of agencies five years ago, now more than sixty transit agencies in North America have CX staff. We join in saluting Michael and MTA as they begin their CX journey and welcome them to the transit Customer Experience movement!
