Delivering high quality customer service
Performance with Pride and Biggest and Best are the UK Bus division’s core objectives. We aim to deliver our timetable commitments and be best in class. Our customers are at the heart of our business and meeting their expectations is central to our future success.
Listening to Our Customers
Our customers include the individuals who use our services, customer interest groups and local authorities. We need to listen to our customers to understand their expectations.
Although we are an international company our local operating companies provide services focused on the local community. Much of our customer engagement therefore takes place at local company level and relates to local issues.
We use a range of engagement methods. We engage with the community on a regular basis regarding proposed route or service changes and use face to face meetings, meet the manager sessions, focus groups or stakeholder conferences to discuss more general issues.
In a growing number of areas we are now establishing more regular customer consultation forums in which a panel of regular bus users meets regularly with the management team of the local operating company.
In addition several of our companies have some form of customer charter or promise.
Bristol, Somerset and Avon launch customer panels
This year Bristol, Somerset and Avon established a number of customer panels developing the concept used within our rail division. Members of the public volunteer to sit on the panels, which meets each quarter with senior managers from the business on a quarterly basis. The panels discuss issues such as fare structures and service changes and seek to promote constructive two-way dialogue. The general public are also invited to feed their comments or suggestions to the panel via a customer panel coordinator, allowing the views of a broader cross section of people to be taken into account.
Better Together – engaging stakeholders in Manchester
In Manchester we hold an annual stakeholder event with our key stakeholders as part of developing partnerships, building brand awareness and improving communication. Stakeholders present include the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive, M’s, company suppliers, representatives from customer groups and customers. This year’s Better Together event sought to demonstrate the effectiveness of good working relationships and to develop new ones.
Customer satisfaction
We gauge the travelling customers’ satisfaction through online surveys, customer questionnaires, Mystery Travellers and by monitoring complaints at both company and divisional board level and actively seek to address concerns raised. We have undertaken a thorough review of our complaint handling process this year and the resulting changes to the system will be implemented during 2008.
Meeting customer expectation is key to the growth of our business and we continue to seek ways to improve our services through investment in vehicles, property, information and training of staff.