Customer
In North America our business is contract-driven. First Transit is one of the largest private sector providers of transit management and contracting services. This includes managing public transport systems on behalf of a range of customers and providing airport shuttle bus services. We also manage call centres, paratransit operations and other light transit activities. First Student operates school bus services on behalf of a range of customers including public and private school districts, commercial charters and schools. First Vehicle Services provide vehicle maintenance services for customers such as the police and fire brigade. In all our contract activities we seek to provide service excellence by providing a customer-centred approach of the highest quality.
Listening to Our Customers
Service excellence demands that we maintain constructive dialogue with our customers. Senior managers visit customers on a regular basis as part of this process. We want to ensure that problems or issues relating to our contracts are identified early and that we maintain an overview of customer satisfaction levels.
Customer Satisfaction
All our North American businesses undertake regular customer satisfaction surveys.
- First Transit issues an annual customer satisfaction questionnaire. The responses are used on a contract-by-contract basis to act on customer concerns. Location-specific passenger surveys are also conducted. The results from these surveys are not amalgamated across the company.
- First Student surveys customer satisfaction annually to identify areas of weak performance and action plans are developed to address issues arising. The 2006 survey indicated marginal improvements on the previous year with 83.8% overall satisfaction and an 89% repurchase intention, an improvement of 3% over the previous year. The issue of greatest concern to our customers remains the overall availability of drivers. We have increased senior management contacts in these contracts and continue to work to improve retention rates as discussed in the Our People section of this report.
- First Vehicle Services conducts quarterly surveys to measure a range of areas of customer satisfaction. Service attributes are scored between 1 and 4 ranging from 'not satisfied' to 'very satisfied'. Over 90% of customers are either 'satisfied' or 'very satisfied' with the service we deliver. Customer satisfaction is also measured on a per repair basis through Critique Cards that show a similar story, with around 87% of customers rating our service as 'excellent' or 'good'. Any negative responses (those responding 'satisfied' or below) are raised as a Corrective Action Request and followed up by the appropriate senior manager. This year our survey was converted to online format and response rates have increased by over 350%.
The overall satisfaction of our customers is reflected in our contract retention rates. During the last fiscal year, First Transit renewed 88% of contracts and won a range of new ones. First Student successfully retained over 96% of contracts and First Vehicle Services has only lost four contracts in the past three fiscal years.